Blanding's Turtles: A Crash Course

Hi everyone!

This lab note provides some basic information on my study species: the wonderful Blanding's turtle! This is a medium-sized, semi-aquatic turtle native mostly to the Great Lakes region in the United States and Canada. Blanding’s turtles are considered endangered, threatened, or a species of conservation concern throughout their range, and the IUCN lists this species as endangered. Threats to Blanding’s turtle conservation include habitat destruction and fragmentation, road mortality, nest predation (especially by mesopredators that thrive in human-dominated landscapes), poaching for the pet trade, and others. In Illinois, Blanding’s turtles are only found in about 20% of their historic range, and many populations will likely go extinct without human intervention.

Fortunately, Blanding’s turtle populations in Lake County, Illinois, are starting to recover thanks to intensive management actions including habitat restoration, predator control, nest protection, and “head-starting” (a.k.a. captive-rearing) juvenile turtles prior to release. The Wildlife Epidemiology Lab has performed health assessments for Blanding’s turtle conservation programs in Illinois over the last several years, and we are uniquely positioned to produce high-quality research on threats to individual and population health in this charismatic species (more info on that in the next lab note!).

See the attached video for more fun facts and cute turtles!

I also wanted to give a shout-out to our turtley awesome donors! Thanks to Brenda Adamovicz, Krista Keller, Kathleen Gartlan, and Nataliya Cullen! We are now 10% of the way to reaching our funding goal. You guys rock!

For more info on our partners in Blanding's turtle conservation, check out these links:

https://www.lcfpd.org/conservation/blandings-turtle-recovery-program/

http://kaneforest.com/flyers/AATFlyer.pdf

https://www.dupageforest.org/plants-wildlife/restore-conserve/wildlife/blandings-turtle

Thanks for your support of this project!

- Dr. Laura