Metroparks Meetup: Improving wetland for turtles
Toledo Zoo teaming up with Metroparks to protect Blanding’s, spotted turtles
SPENCER TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WTVG) - If you’ve come down Moseley Trail between Secor and Wiregrass Lake Metroparks recently, you may have asked yourself, “Where did the pond go?” The water will be slow to fill back up, but a slow pace is just fine by its usual residents: Blanding’s and spotted turtles, which the Metroparks are hoping to save in cooperation with The Toledo Zoo.
“We’ve got two very rare and unique species of turtles in the area, and they’ve been the focus of our research for quite a while in some cases,” says conservation biologist Matt Cross. The Toledo Zoo has been trapping turtles on this site for 3 years, though other Metroparks have hosted their surveys since 2005.
Blanding’s and spotted turtles are state-listed species who are just looking for a good home, especially after this summer. “Due to our drought, what used to be this pond wetland actually dried out completely,” says LaRae Sprow, natural resources supervisor for Metroparks Toledo. “That gave us an opportunity to look at restructuring the pond, to figure out what it needs to better function for wildlife. Those ponds typically have these really steep slopes, so we recontour the ponds to functionally act as better habitat for our native wildlife. We [also] did some tree clearing on the slope, to create a warmer place for turtles to do their nesting in the summertime."
The return of that water will take a bit more time, with the Metroparks adopting a literal ground-up strategy instead of waiting for rainwater to refill the site. “We dug pieces of the pond a little deeper,” recalls Sprow, “so we could hit the water table. The entire pond does not need to retain water for turtle habitat, we just need portions of it.”
The zoo’s methodology can seem tedious, though Cross doesn’t seem to mind. “My colleagues might be pretty jealous of what we’ve been able to accomplish here! We come out to these sites, do some surveys and live trapping, mark/recapture, sometimes telemetry. That gives us a lot of information that we can pass on to land managers, so we can start looking at restoration projects like this one.”
That research has already confirmed one suspicion for local turtles' nesting habits: “As places dry up out here, our rate of telemetry has shown that they’ll move across roads to backyard ponds,” says Cross. “If we can provide a ‘one-stop-shop’, that’s really going to help reduce that mortality as they cross the road.”
The Oak Opening wet prairies are highly fragmented, so these improved ponds provide a safe natural connection for these turtles’ shells to dwell. “What benefits turtles will benefit a lot of other species,” Cross observes, “and we’ve really been able to tailor this as a really nice habitat for them.”
For more information, check out the Metroparks blog post on their restoration efforts.
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