Board of Directors

DAVID S. LEE, Executive Director [TorResInc@aol.com]
     Dave recently retired as the curator of birds at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences. He had been at the museum since 1975 and during this period also served as interim curator of mammals, assistant director, and director of the North Carolina Biological Survey. Prior to moving to North Carolina he worked at the Florida State Museum, and was curator of mammals at the Maryland Natural History Society. He is a research associate of the Florida State Museum. He has published over 400 papers, book chapters and books on various natural history topics. The major focus of his research is tropical sea birds but about 25% of his publications are on reptiles and amphibians. Aside from his seabird research probably his best known publication is an Atlas of the Freshwater Fishes of North America (1980).
     Dave cannot remember a time when he was not fascinated by turtles. His academic interest in chelonians shifted to conservation when he initiated several successful turtle conservation projects in 1990 and in 1995 he incorporated The Tortoise Reserve as a non- profit organization. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Click here to view the publications by D. S. Lee

MARTHA WALSH-McGEHEE, Chairman (chairwoman, chairperson--what ever) of the Board
[tropbird@unspoiledqueen.com]
     Mandy has been president of the Island Conservation Effort, an international nonprofit corporation, since 1988. She is currently representative on the Executive Council of the Society of Caribbean Ornithology, and an active member of the Saba Conservation Foundation. She is a research associate of the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, and was an officer of the Board of Trustees for the RARE Center. She has been involved in conservation work for several decades, is widely traveled in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific, and has been working on the conservation of Caribbean birds since 1987. Currently Mandy is working on several long term tropicbird research projects and has published a number of papers on the two species of tropicbirds occurring in the West Indies region. She is involved in a number of environmental educational projects, is active in the legislative process for conservation in the West Indies and is completing a book on the birds of Saba. She also oversees our bird species inventories on our Venezuelan sanctuaries. Mandy lives on Saba, a five square mile island in the Netherlands Antilles.

JOHN D. GROVES, Secretary/Treasurer [John.Groves@ncmail.net]
     John has been in the zoo field for 33 years. He started as a keeper in the reptile house at the Baltimore Zoo in 1966. He went to the Philadelphia Zoological Park where he moved from Head Keeper, to Assistant Curator, to Curator (1986-1993). Between 1986 and 1993 he also served as curator of birds at the Philadelphia Zoo. Since 1993 he has been curator of Reptiles and Amphibians at the North Carolina Zoological Park. Throughout his career the various zoos where he has worked have had incredibly low reptile and amphibian mortality rates, in fact, the lowest for any zoo in this country.
     John has worked with turtles and tortoises in Africa, Central America, South America (including the Galapagos Islands), Mexico and the United States and has published a number of papers on his work. Turtle projects include breeding Galapagos tortoises (PZG), bog turtle breeding (PZG) and surveys of historical bog turtle sites in Pennsylvania (Nature Conservancy). He worked on the development of our red-footed tortoise program in Venezuela (Tortoise Reserve), and was involved with a desert tortoise recovery project (Drexel University and The Nature Conservancy).

Our Board

L. RICHARD FRANZ [dfranz@flmnh.ufl.edu]
     Dick Franz is on the faculty of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. He has studied gopher tortoises, their burrow commensals, and Florida box turtles. Dick is interested in the ecology of amphibians and reptiles in Florida and the Caribbean. He aided Walter Auffenberg in establishing the Gopher Tortoise Council in 1978 and helped guide this organization for about 10 years. The purpose of the GTC is to promote research on the gopher tortoise and its upland habitats in order to better understand the challenges inherent in conserving this declining species. Dick is currently studying fossil tortoises in Florida, Nebraska, and the West Indies.

BERN TRYON [btryon@knoxvill-zoo.org]
     Bern Tryon is Director of Animal Collections/Herpetology at the Knoxville Zoological Gardens, Knoxville, TN. He first entered the zoo profession in 1971 and worked in the herp departments at zoos in Atlanta, Fort Worth, and Houston prior to coming to Knoxville in 1984. His primary interests are natural history and conservation of chelonians and snakes. Since 1986, he has been the primary researcher in a study of bog turtles in Tennessee. In addition to these field studies, the zoo developed a captive-breeding program for bog turtles which has been successful since 1988.
     Bern served on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles (SSAR) and for 12 years was Section Editor for Herpetological Husbandry for Herpetological Review, a quarterly publication of SSAR. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Chelonian Conservation and Biology, a professional journal published by the Chelonian Research Foundation.

MARY SOCCI [whitlist1@home.com]
     Mary Socci studied archaeology at Princeton and Yale and has a Ph.D. from Yale. Her area of expertise is faunal analysis and she has worked on numerous Native American and colonial sites in the eastern United States. A particular interest is the historical and prehistorical use of chelonians. In addition, she has been involved with the Tortoise Reserve since its inception and manages a diverse population of tortoises and turtles at the Spartanburg Science Center.

Our Volunteers

     The Tortoise Reserve runs on volunteer efforts. Not only are our officers, board, and volunteers not paid, they cover their own expenses. This does not equate into low overhead, it equals no overhead, allowing every dollar go directly to conservation efforts. While our volunteers are too numerous to list individually four need special mention. E. Wayne Irvin (Southern Pines, NC) not only provides us with a number of excellent photographs but he computer catalogues our slide collection and prints labels for all the slides we sell. New slides are donated faster than he can catalogue them so we allow him 30 minutes a month to complain. Julie Molinaro (Mid-Atlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society) takes care of all our graphic and printing needs. She is a design artists and does an excellent job. We dump a lot of stuff on her so she is allowed to complain but we think she is saving it up. Renaldo G. Kuhler (Scientific Illustrator, NC State Museum of Natural History; retired) prepared our logo and does most of the illustrations for our scientific publications. He complains all of the time, but its part of his job description. Joe McSharry (Maryland Natural History Society) photographed and is now editing the first of our educational videos. We also have volunteer photographers, turtle keepers, turtle sitters, turtle sellers, vets, proof readers (they are not too good), text writers for slide sets, grounds keepers, pen builders, and numerous professionals who manage to squeak our request into their job assignments. We thank em all. Once a year we have a big beer blast at our White Lake property and this serves as our official recognition of their efforts. Donors, at least the ones who don’t seen too stuffy, are also invited. Its a weekend long event, live bands, cottonmouth hunts, and everything. Some year we will host it on our Arizona property. We think some of our volunteers are into this more for the parties than a love of turtles.

     Because of the internet our volunteers need not be located within striking distance of North Carolina (but they will miss out on some great parties). At this time we need a volunteer web master and someone to oversee, write, and distribute (mostly electronically) news and other information to our various sanctuary owners. We could also use legal help in drafting custom conservation easements for sanctuaries and a media person who can help spread the word about our activities and the conservation needs of turtles. The photo collection and associated sales could use a volunteer (would need to be located in central NC) and we need someone to oversee the sanctuary program.

The latter is taking on a life of its own. Anyone seriously interested in helping with the coordination of aspects of our chelonian conservation activities for any state or country should contact us. Hey; last minute deadlines, little direction, poor supervision, long hours, no pay, nothing provided, minimal recognition, and it will probably end up costing you to do it! How can you say no.