Endangered Snapping Turtle is getting a new lease on life and can live t0 about 70-years-old.
A life-saving program is underway to help preserve the endangered Snapping Turtle living at Colonel Samuel Smith Park.
The project by the Friends of Samuel Smith Park (FOSS) and High Park Turtle Protectors (HPTP) has saved about 90 Snapping Turtle hatchlings around the North Creek Wetland in the five-hectare lakefront park.
“Our inaugural Turtle Monitoring Project has been a success,” FOSS members said. “About 90 Snapping Turtle hatchlings have to date been successfully “escorted” to the water by turtle monitors.”
FOSS member Duncan Farnan with a cover to protect the endangered species.
FOSS member Terry Smith said by joining forces with the Indigenous-guide High Park group, FOSS will benefit from their expertise and operational procedures.
“They (HPTP) will provide the protectors for nesting Snapping Turtles and Midland Painted Turtles as well as a storage shed for them in Sam Smith,” Smith said. “They will put up signs around the wetland area with a hotline number to report laying females and emerging hatchlings.”
The group will also provide a training programme for volunteer monitors and FOSS will have quick access to a biologist with lots of experience and expertise with turtles.
Friends of Samuel Smith Park with a protective cover to protect turtles. The baby turtles when hatched are escorted to the waterway.
He said to preserve the hatchlings, protective covers are placed over where the eggs are buried in the soft sandy soil and when they are hatched around June the baby turtles are escorted to the water by volunteers.
“We are advised by the High Park Turtle Protectors that Snapping Turtle eggs, unlike Midland Painted, cannot survive the winter,” Smith said. “They freeze solid and become unviable.”
He said statistics show the highest density of painted turtles amongst the Lake’s coastal wetlands at Samuel Smith Park.
The endangered Snapping Turtles are eaten by wolves, skunks or raccoons. They are also hit by cars while crossing the roadways.
The baby turtles are eaten by foxes, skunks or raccoons and have to be protected.
“The loss of even a few adult turtles from a population every year is enough to cause that population to decline, and this makes snapping turtle populations very vulnerable to threats such as road mortality, hunting and poaching,” officials said.
Many are killed by vehicles in the summer as they try to cross roads in search of mates, food and nest sites.
The snapping turtle is listed as Special Concern under both the Ontario Endangeed Species Act and the federal Species at Risk Act. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the global status of the snapping turtle as Least Concern.
One of the protective wire cover used to keep the baby turtles safe from predators. Photos by Friends of Samuel Smith Park.
They can live up to 70-years-old.
FOSS has also set up boxes to protect another endangered species, the Tree Swallows, which arrive early from their winter vacation in the southern states and Central America.
The birds inhabit Swallow Field, which is located south of the waterfront trail that runs through the park and immediately east of the yacht club. FOSS has been installing dozens of Tree Swallow nest boxes there over the past ten years. There are now more than sixty boxes in the park.
Every spring, volunteers prepare the boxes for the swallows by cleaning them out, repairing and sterilizing them against parasite.
The birds start turning up in the last week of March and are present in the park in large numbers by the middle of April.