A Program of Sanctuary
Brugal, our aging golden retriever, loves to find turtles. Though also fond of chasing squirrels, drinking from toilets, and riding in cars, his top passion is hunting turtles. On drizzly summer mornings, just the thought of finding one provides the stimulus to get his arthritic body out the door. This dog has an uncanny ability to track 'em down, discover their hiding places, and on occasion Brugal even digs them from hibernation. When my wife or I are with him he simply points. On the rare days when we let him go off on his own Brugal feels compelled to bring his trophies home.
Patiently waiting by the kitchen door with one, sometimes two, turtles in his mouth, he waits for acknowledgement of his find while exhibiting that tail-wagging can still be achieved even when sitting. True happiness! Over time the turtles have become accustom to the game, and while my wife and I are sure that having a morning interrupted by a 100 pound canine is not a turtle's idea of a good day, once Brugal puts them down they quickly crawl off and get back to the business of being a turtle. Because of this dog's relentless pursuit of turtles I have become familiar with the box turtles living in and around our wood lot. I know where many of them hibernate, the times of the day and year they are most often active, and who lives where. Like Brugal I get excited about a morning turtle hunt, but most of all I am surprised at how many turtles there are. We have 10-15 regulars, and another 20 to 30 that show up every now and again. This does not include all the immatures, an age class in box turtles I seldom encounter without the dog's help.
I have always liked turtles, and Brugal's obsession began early too, when as a puppy he found his first turtle. He was rewarded for his find. In dogeeze this must have somehow come across as "Ok Brugal, your soul mission in life is to find more turtles". Some turtles get discovered more often than others. For example, there is an old male box turtle in the east corner of our property. He spends a lot of time around the root system of a large sycamore. Its a box turtle's idea of a high rent district, exposed roots to wedge beneath, a small creek, and a short hundred yard climb up the forested hill to gardens and other sunny spots. During warm weather Brugal finds this turtle several times a month. I first encountered this same individual over 25 years ago when I purchased the property-- long before Brugal's existence. I would come across him once or twice a year. And even back then he mostly hung out by the sycamore. Each spring when I take visitors down to the creek bottom to see the trilliums in bloom I also include the turtle as part of the tour package. Back when our neighbor across the fence still had dairy cows I discovered this turtle had a fondness for all the maggots and other insects that completed their early stages of life in cow pies, and the only year I planted strawberries this was the turtle to first find them.
Anyone who has paid even token attention to box turtles knows no two look alike, but this particular male's most distinctive mark is his missing right eye. I have no idea what caused the eye loss, but the eye socket was well-healed over 25 years ago. And while I am sure that standard issue, two-eyed box turtles are more efficient, this turtle seems to be inconvenienced little by his handicap. After the fall rains he always manages to locate his favorite toadstool patches, and twice I have encountered him while he was contributing his DNA to a future generation of box turtles. Based on the various locations around our wood lot where he has been found I would venture a guess that in a lifetime this turtle probably has not been more than a quarter mile from his sycamore. So the question arises how long has this turtle been here. In that he was full grown and his shell was rather worn 25 years ago, an age of 50-to-75 years does not seen unreasonable, and he may be older yet. This turtle's father, or grandfather, was possibly an off-and-on pet of children of pre-civil war slaves--slaves who helped tend the cotton fields above the ravine where the old sycamore stands.
Over the years fondness for turtles has led me into many turtle conservation efforts, one of which was a sanctuary program the Tortoise Reserve initiated in Venezuela. Its a great program that involves many thousands of acres of private lands that serve as refuges not only for turtles and tortoises, but a host of other wildlife. On one particular ranch, the first incorporated into our informal agreement with landowners to protect wildlife, we not only tallied sizable populations of a number of species of sidenecked turtles, but over 250 species of birds, 27 species of snakes (including anacondas), and interesting creatures such as giant anteaters, red howler monkeys, manatees and pink-sided river dolphins.
One day last spring a long-time friend, and down-the-road-a-piece neighbor, Ron Mobley and I spent a quiet Saturday afternoon watching various favorite local college basketball teams lose one game after another, all the while drinking substantial quantities of Old Milwaukee. During commercials and at half-times I explained to Ron the various aspects of our sanctuary program, and as the can recycling container filled the conversation grew more and more philosophical. Nature, land ethics, turtles, conservation, the world as we knew it going-to-hell-in-a-bucket were all topics of noble dialogue. Ron agreed with the private sanctuary concept, liked my argument that private lands often provide better refuges than public ones, and couldn't understand why I did not want to expand the same program to include North Carolina. His pond and 11 acre lot, he believed, would make a great turtle sanctuary. Actually I had not thought about this before, and the more he talked the more sound the idea became. While black bears and bobcats indeed needed vast areas with interconnected corridors of protected landscape to make a go of it, animals like turtles ask for little. A small wood lot here, a section of creek, or a single farm pond is sometimes all turtles need to maintain small viable populations. Well what incentive could we give people to declare their parcels of land as sanctuaries for turtles and other wildlife? Ron thought you would need none, just the suggestion that here was a program that encourages good land ethics was all that was required. Hell it was a good educational opportunity, and the concept certainly would not hurt native wildlife. That afternoon my wood lot and his property and pond were christened as the first and second Tortoise Reserve Sanctuaries in the US. Since our original Old Milwaukee toast, the program has grown. We now have over half a million acres in sanctuaries in eight states and three countries. The Tortoise Reserve Sanctuary program, now involving about 40 private land owners, continues to grow.
Because of this program I am now discovering that Brugal and I are not the only ones who like having turtles around. A number of people have signed up to be part of the sanctuary program, an idea that so far has only been spread by word of mouth. Some of the more innovative sanctuaries include waterfront property on the upper Chesapeake Bay where landowners provide nesting beaches for diamondback terrapins, a 500-acre track owned by a private waterfowl preservation trust, and a tract in the North Carolina coastal plain supporting a large swamp forest. All total, at least 35 species of chelonians are already receiving some sort of protection under the umbrella of this program, while several are species of global or regional conservation concern, this effort is perhaps best aimed at what are regarded as common species.
Lets examine one phase of the program in detail. These are not just feel good efforts, we attempt to address real conservation issues. Working with the Terrapin Institute, a conservation organization operating in the Chesapeake Bay area, and the Maryland Department of State Fisheries we combined our three independently conceived sanctuary programs. The composite regional effort now stands at 802 acres of Maryland waterfront property as turtle sanctuaries. The primary goal is to establish nesting beaches for terrapins. The program is an antidote to a growing problem of private property owners walling off waterfronts to prevent erosion. The walls do prevent erosion, but they also prohibit female terrapins from reaching key nesting areas. Erosion is not the only issue. For properties where the residences are out of sight of the shoreline, trespassing from the water side is a constant problem. Boaters think nothing of coming ashore to allow dogs to "exercise", and property is often trashed. The placement of "No Trespassing" signs did little to discourage the constant invasion.
The posting of shoreline as nesting sanctuaries for terrapins is more productive. The public sees this posting as a positive, meaningful request, expanding the concept of multiple use of the Bay, and the land owner retains their property rights. We also see it as a subtle educational effort for both the public and the landowners. Additionally, boaters don't complain that vital recreational public land is being monopolized for the terrapins. This program is all private, tended at no expense to taxpayers, indirectly enhances real estate value, and increases the annual reproductive success of terrapins. Other property owners are joining in. One participating owner has removed armoring revetment which had prohibited access of not just people but nesting terrapins. This property, at the owner's expense, has been restored to a natural grass beach strand. This was done exclusively for the terrapins. A town on the Chesapeake may be the first municipality registered as a Turtle Sanctuary under this cooperative program. The town is restoring 12 acres back to natural conditions, it will be posted for turtles, while at the mayor's request students from a local college are planning to initiate turtle diversity and populations studies in the area. Miles of shoreline are now protected as terrapin nesting beaches, inland sections of the properties are informal sanctuaries and we expect the total number of private sanctuaries in this section of the Bay to double this year.
Why turtles? Well Brugal likes them and so do I. And if you can still dredge up the excitement of your first childhood experience with a turtle, so do you. People are in tune with turtles. And whether they be trees or turtles, there is something to be said of things living on your property that are older than you. The very concept adds a level of stability to our lives, and a different type of value to the property. There are rewards for the long-term management of lands which support such ageless reptiles as turtles, but for the most part these are rewards you will have to discover for yourself. You may not see the voles, flying squirrels, or the milk snakes that share the space you have grown to think of as yours, but turtles, while shy, and non-vocal, generally make their presence known. Unfortunately the same low key behaviors and inflexible shells that have made them resilient, also make turtles vulnerable to our changing fast-track world. With sanctuary, a new competitive edge which leans toward long-term survival is, in part, restored. Providing turtles with private sanctuaries is something we can do on a personal level that has little cost, and, for me at least, great satisfaction. Remember all this next summer when you discover what is left of the garden tomatoes or the prize imported water lilies in your pond.
Eastern Box Turtle © Derrick Hammerick
While there are a large number of key national and state parks that do a lot for conservation of various species of wildlife, collectively these public reserves represent only 6% of the earth's surface. Furthermore, the majority of these sites were originally chosen for their scenic attributes, or in some cases because they represented lands which were so degraded that they had little economic value and making them into parks was the only logical thing to do with them. In only a few were cases these sites actually chosen because of their wildlife values, but the target species were typically large hoofed mammals which had been decimated by previous generations. Criteria vary widely, in North America, for example, most of our park and forest public lands are in the western part of the continent, in that the east was highly developed and the land was too valuable to be used for conservation initiatives by the time a park system was envisioned. Much of this land was saved because of potential timber and mineral attributes, not for wildlife, and throughout most of the last century it was logged, scraped, logged again, and dammed. This was not only the norm, it was policy. All these factors are important to take into account when developing management strategies for our lesser wildlife. Sites important to logging, mining, and bison and pronghorn antelope are not necessarily key habitats for towhees, toads, or turtles. Furthermore, western North America has a very limited chelonian fauna while turtles achieve their greatest species diversity and densities in the southeastern United States. Here there are not only fewer lands in park and forest systems, but much of what is preserved is along the crest of mountain ranges where stream gradients prohibit the establishment of many turtle populations.
Eastern Box Turtle © Derrick Hammerick
Because of a number of historic and ecological factors many of the areas of high turtle diversity are also ones of high development and the highest human population densities (SE United States, S E Asia, India). Fortunately, unlike larger animals, many species of turtles can successfully maintain viable populations in small fragments of land. By targeting specific sites it is possible to establish a network of mini-sanctuaries on private lands which will provide protection for a number of turtles which are now of conservation concern (about half the world's chelonian fauna). Private sanctuary programs such as this will not only help to instill good land ethics in landowners and their children, they are programs which can develop independent of bureaucracy and at no cost to the public. While the effort is focused on turtles it is obvious that a vast number of other indigenous biotic elements also receive protection. It is with this in mind that the Tortoise Reserve encourages landowners to participate in our grassroots sanctuary program.
As people we have legal property rights, but we obtained these only after we invented paper, alphabets, Xerox machines, courtrooms and tax formulas. My friend Ron Mobley argues that the male snapping turtle in his three-acre pond also has property rights. For the last 15 years this snapper has been successfully excluding every other male snapping turtle of any size from the pond, and as far as that turtle is concerned it is his pond. One would not need to go back too many box turtle generations to arrive at a time before European man arrived with his concepts of property. The one eyed box turtle by the sycamore has occupied that corner of the wood lot through a period when the legal land ownership has changed hands at least four times. This turtle has behavioral, genetic, and perhaps emotional ties to my wood lot which are far stronger than mine. But this does not need to become a case of animal rights and militant activism vs common sense and current law, it simply requires me to recognize that this is his wood lot too. The fact that I own some papers and pay taxes is irrelevant to old one-eye. What is important to him, all that is important to him, is that I do not drastically alter the landscape or sell my lot to some damn developer who will.
Our unwritten, unspoken, contract is one of long term sanctuary. A place where tasty toadstools and slugs flourish, Louisiana Water thrushes nests, turtle eggs incubate in peace in the warm soil of our garden, and I can drink cold beer while watching woodland fireflies flicker up the summer night. Its not a very demanding obligation on my part, and even less of one for the turtle, yet its a far better deal than most aging box turtles are currently getting in the Raleigh area. Even if we could have a written contract regarding good land ethics, I can't imagine that old one-eye would ask for anything more. Well maybe he would add a clause about keeping Brugal on a leash, but lets face it --the turtles and I both have a good deal going here.
Dave Lee
The Tortoise Reserve, Inc.
Joseph Wood Krutch 1952. The Desert Year.