Wild and Free

Hello, My name is Jasmine. I am 14 years old and a previous turtle owner. I got my baby box turtle when my family and I went to a river to canoe. At the canoe rental lodge, they had two Eastern Box Turtles but they didn’t have the proper housing or light. The two turtles were cramped in a small aquarium by a window through which no light was penetrating. Later on while the owner of the lodge was asking us about our canoeing trip, the subject of turtles was brought up and the man said that if we could give it a good home we could take the small one! This turtle, by the way was found near the river at the lodge . It was not a turtle bought at a pet store, but a turtle taken from the wild.

I guess that owning a turtle of your very own can be explained in stages. At the beginning, you get the turtle home and make a creative cage setup for it. I went to the veterinarian and learned that this turtle should have a heat basking lamp and a uva/uvb ray lamp to give the turtle’s skin and shell vitamins. The tank should also be equipped with a specific spot in which the turtle will bask. There also should be a water dish where the turtle will soak and drink in the water. So this is how I designed the setup. At this stage this turtle seems to be the best pet you could ever have. It’s cute and NEW! Then you realize that you need to care for your pet properly so that it stays healthy, RIGHT? (this is how it was for me not all turtles are so lucky). So you get on the Internet to see the proper way to care for your turtle. During this process you realize that this turtle is going to be a big responsibility and difficult to care for. Pretty soon you’ll start to notice a downward trend: that your turtle is going to live for a long time and you have got to keep up with it. You need to clean its cage and collect food for it all the time. If you have learned anything while reading about care for your turtle, you will also find that if your turtle came from the wild it would be much better off where it came from no matter how big of a cage you have for it. A small cage can also play a part in stunting a turtle’s growth. (I gave my turtle the right light and environment and food however a 15 gallon tank was not even large enough for my half-dollar sized Eastern Box Turtle.

I don’t think she was happy!) She is three years old now and is less than half the size that a normal three-year-old boxer should be. Pretty sad huh? That usually wouldn’t have happened in her natural habitat.

So you love your pet right? And you want it to be happy am I correct? But you’re not ready to let it go, which by the way is the very best thing that you could do if you got your turtle from the wild in the first place. I did learn that you cannot release a turtle back into the wild unless it is the area it was taken from and that it wasn't with other turtles while you owned it. Before taking a turtle from the wild, think of what a turtle does. They don’t cuddle, they don’t come when they are called, they usually struggle when you hold them, and they don’t talk! They bask, they eat, and they sit around. Turtles are loners not companions. In other words, they can be boring pets.

My turtle that I still love is now under the experienced care of “The Turtle Lady.” There she will get enough room, and the proper habitat. Too bad she’ll never be released into the wild where she belongs because of the captivity we selfishly put her in.

All that roadkill isn't just accidental -- an Ontario study has found almost three per cent of drivers, the majority of them men, swerve to intentionally steamroll snakes and turtles on the road. The study by three Ontario researchers published in the May edition of the Human Dimensions of Wildlife journal found that some drivers ran over reptiles on purpose on a road near Long Point.

RUN OVER

This doesn't mean that 2.7 per cent of roadkill is intentionally hit. It means 2.7 per cent of drivers who see reptiles on the road go out of their way to run them over.

"Two point seven per cent of the people out there is a lot and especially when those 2.7 per cent of people probably do it often or whenever they get the chance," Scott Petrie, one the researchers, said Thursday.

The study could be the first to show reptile roadkill isn't just accidental, said Petrie, research director of the Long Point Waterfowl and Wetlands Research Fund. The study was conducted in 2005, led by Paul Ashley, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service. Petrie said Ashley has calculated that the causeway from Port Rowan to Long Point, between two wetlands, is the fifth-deadliest road for turtles in the world. To test Ashley's suspicions that some of the roadkill was no mistake, the researchers alternated between placing a plastic turtle, a rubber snake, a white cup and a grease control line on the centre of the road. The grease line helped researchers know how many drivers passed over the centre line by mistake. Cars following close behind other cars weren't counted in case drivers couldn't see the objects. The researchers used data from more than 1,900 vehicles. The fake snake fared the worst. "Apparently there were some people that sped up and rode the centre line to run over the snake," Petrie said. The journal article said "drivers were 2.4 times more likely to hit the snake than the control and 1.9 times more likely to hit the snake than the cup."

1.7 TIMES LIKELY

For the turtle, drivers were 1.7 times more likely to hit it than the control and 1.4 times more likely to hit the turtle than the cup. Men were more likely than female drivers to hit any of the objects on the road. "Probably testosterone, I don't know," said Petrie. Some drivers tried to rescue what looked like an Eastern fox snake and a small snapping turtle before realizing they were fakes. Petrie said he was disappointed that some people who stopped really just wanted to pick up the reptiles and take them home.

Drivers may run over wildlife for kicks and others may think they're doing everyone a favour by killing a snake since they aren't well liked, he said. But reptile roadkills are a problem because reptiles are declining, and turtles, unlike raccoons, take longer to become sexually mature, meaning they're killed on the road before they can reproduce. "There's lots of rare and endangered reptile species in the province, so you never know what you're running over and you shouldn't run over anything."

Drivers should watch the road and slow down to avoid hitting wildlife. He suggests being very careful if you try to get the reptile across the road and always send the reptile in the direction it was headed. The study suggests not building roads between prime reptile habitat or building underpasses or barriers to keep snakes and turtles off the pavement.