by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
A lesson I’ve learned in my short career working with endangered wildlife in New Jersey is that you always need to be prepared for the unexpected. You never know what tomorrow brings.
There is never too much gear you can have at your disposal. Luckily, for the surviving bald eagle that was rescued, local residents made it possible. (more…)
By Stephanie Egger, Wildlife Biologist
Stephanie Egger prepares to insert a PIT tag into a terrapin in 2004.
Over the summers of 2004 and 2005, as part of my graduate research for Saint Joseph’s University and in partnership with Rutgers University Marine Field Station, I tagged 300 adult female northern diamondback terrapins to gain a better understanding of their nesting movements, nesting events, and road mortality on Great Bay Boulevard in Tuckerton, New Jersey. These terrapins were tagged with PIT tags (Passive Integrated Transponder tags) which are the size of a grain of rice and inserted directly under the skin. The PIT tags are individually numbered and can be read with a hand-held scanner in the field for essentially the life of the terrapin. Some terrapins were nesting more than once per season and generally within 50 meters from their original tagged location, but a few were found great distances (1000 meters) from their initial location (See Szerlag-Egger and McRobert 2007).
Ben Wurst, our Habitat Program Manager, and Kristin Ryerson, a CWFNJ intern, were able to scan some terrapins this summer as part of the Great Bay Terrapin Project and came across one of the terrapins I tagged in 2005! She has survived 7 years (and counting) on Great Bay Boulevard from becoming road kill on a road where 50 terrapins can be killed in a nesting season (See Szerlag and McRobert 2006). The distance between her location in 2005 and 2012 was 826 meters! It appears that she may have emerged from the creek and decided to travel north to nest instead of south (see Google Earth image below). I am hopeful we can continue to monitor the terrapins on Great Bay Boulevard and collect further information on tagged terrapins as it may have management implications for the future.
An adult female terrapin who was PIT tagged in 2005 on Great Bay Boulevard and later recaptured in 2012.
by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
Last Thursday there was a flurry of activity throughout coastal New Jersey. It was one of the peak days of the beginning of the northern diamondback terrapin nesting season. I had scheduled myself to be off to work on projects around my house but ended up working for half the day on our Great Bay Terrapin Conservation Project. Female terrapins were everywhere! They were crossing all over Great Bay Blvd., a 5 mile long road that bisects pristine terrapin habitat. The shoulders of the road are suitable nesting habitat as well, so at times as many as 10-15 terrapins could be seen in one small section of the road. There were so many that one terrapin bumped right into another one on the shoulder of the road!! They were digging nests and laying eggs all over the place. It was certainly a rare sight. Luckily traffic was mild and the weather was clear so there were little road kills. One female fell victim to a Little Egg Harbor Twp. mower who was mowing the edges of the road. This certainly wasn’t the best day to mow the shoulders! Before more terrapins could be killed we contacted LEHT public works and they called off their mower until further notice. On a side note, we have asked the township and the environmental commission to adopt a delayed mowed regime in the past and unfortunately one terrapin died because of this. I even emailed the public works director early last week about nesting activity picking up and I asked for him to please let me know when they were planning to mow so we could have someone walk in front of the mower to be sure no terrapins were hit. On the positive side, we were able to salvage 7 eggs from the terrapin, and they were successfully placed in a hatchery in Loveladies on LBI. We have our fingers crossed that they’ll hatch later this summer!
Finally, we have had more of a presence on Great Bay Blvd this year with the assistance of our new intern, Kristin Ryerson. She is collecting data (size, age, weight, and other data) on terrapins that she encounters while conducting road patrols on Great Bay Blvd. We’ll be using this data to compare it to some collected in Barnegat Bay and past studies that were conducted on the road. Her position is a volunteer position so I really appreciate all of her help so far! We also have volunteers who are acting as “Terrapin Stewards” where they also conduct road patrols to collect sightings of terrapins, educate visitors to the road about terrapins, and they also make sure terrapins safely cross the road. Without their help this project would not be successful!
By Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
Female Northern Diamondback terrapin by Jonathan Carlucci
Terrapins are ectothermic, or they are cold-blooded, and their activity is regulated by external temperatures in the environment. While they may be dormant at the moment, I’m far from that. I’ve never stopped working to protect terrapins from the end of last year’s nesting season. While it’s almost impossible to prevent every terrapin from being hit-by-car, it’s more important to highlight the need for protection and for people to become more aware of terrapins when driving.
© 2019 Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey