Our Nature Center is home to a variety of turtles. We care for many in our Rehabilitation Clinic, usually for shell fractures when gravid females cross the road and are hit by cars. It is exciting that it has become more and more common for people to stop and help turtles across roads or bring them into care if they have been hurt.
Most people know now that turtles like Painted and Snapping are out of the water to lay their eggs, and it is vital that they be put in the direction they were headed, not taken as pets, and not returned to the water. People also know that Snapping Turtles are powerful and get frightened. Great care should be taken not to get bitten, by maneuvering them onto a car floor matt and pulling them across the road, or by giving them a strong stick to chomp down on and pulling them gently by the stick. Never pick them up by the tail as this can break their spine or try holding them at mid shell where they can reach their long necks and bite. Always make careful note of the location where you found the turtles as they must go back to their own territory. Most of the turtles in our Nature Center are here because we don’t know where they came from which makes them non-releasable.
Most of our state’s turtles are threatened or endangered. At least half of the world’s turtles are also threatened or endangered. People take them as pets, a torturous process as most people don’t understand that it is illegal and don’t know how to keep them alive. Cars run over them. Proper wet habitat is torn up and destroyed. Many of our rare species spend more time on land than Painted and Snapping, putting them at risk for all these dangers. Turtles should live from 30 to 100 years depending on the species. Unless they are crossing a road LEAVE THEM ALONE!
