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Endangered Box Turtles

© Kenneth Friedman

I love turtles. Always have. Particularly box turtles. I once took a wood carving class. Everyone else carved ducks. I carved a box turtle. I wish I had a box turtle or two in my backyard, but I don't, I won't, and you shouldn't either.

Don't buy them in pet stores. Don't collect them from the wild. Don't move them except to get help them across the road. Although the government hasn't declared box turtles threatened or endangered, it is only a matter of time before such recognition will be necessary, and by then it will be too late. Unlike other species with more rapid and successful breeding habits, box turtles, like their storybook image, are just too slow.

You'll find many web pages about box turtle care, but the best care you can give is to leave them in the wild.

The box turtle, which many people once thought (and many people still do) was common in the Mid-Atlantic region, isn't so common. In fact, it hasn't been common for a long time. According to an e-mail by box turtle researchers George M. Patton and Martha Ann Messinger, Louisiana, which was shared with me, archeological studies of pre-Columbian Iroquois burial sites in what is today western New York show box turtle populations couldn't sustain collection. Researchers found that while early graves contained several box turtle shells buried along with the dead, newer graves contained snapping turtle substitutes. This indicated the box turtle population had been depleted (extirpated). Once extirpated, those populations never recovered.

Study after study throughout the Mid-Atlantic region over periods from 10 to 50 years show box turtle populations in decline. One 50-year study shows a population decline of 25 percent. A 30-year study shows a decline from 50 turtles to 6. A 10-year study shows hatchling survival so low that a population "could not compensate for the loss of even one adult per year," according to William Belzer, a biologist at Clarion University, Pa.

Collecting, car smashing, and habitat loss and alteration have cut their numbers significantly. In an e-mail, Belzer cites a Connecticut study that showed collection for pets as being a major cause for extirpation (disappearance) of stable populations. Belzer also says that one conclusion drawn at a national conference on box turtle conservation sponsored by the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge and Mid-Atlantic Turtle and Tortoise Society (MATTS) was that "box turtles (like wood, bog and spotted turtles) cannot survive even modest harvest from the wild."