AUGUSTA – Two of the state’s rarest turtles – Blanding’s and spotted – could soon benefit from projects ranging from “turtle crossing” signs to wildlife overpasses.
But declining revenues from loon license plates, Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund lottery tickets and the “chickadee tax check-off,” are endangering projects designed to protect the state’s endangered species, like turtles.
However, thanks to federal wildlife grant funds and cooperative efforts between the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Department of Transportation, and The Nature Conservancy, a new program to save turtles is in the works.
It involves enlisting volunteers to adopt key road segments throughout York County for monitoring road-crossing movements and road kill of rare and common turtles, according to state wildlife biologist Phillip deMaynadier.
“To date, more than 2,600 wetlands have been surveyed, yielding over 100 new locations for these rare species,” deMaynadier stated in a report Wednesday.
“The attrition of just a few breeding adult turtles every year to road kill has no natural precedent,” deMaynadier added.
and may rank among the most important factors threatening the extinction of Blanding’s and spotted turtles in Maine,” he added.Inherent population constraints faced by Blanding’s and spotted turtles – long age to reproductive maturity and high nest mortality – have historically been offset by long adult life spans, deMaynadier stated.
But road kill short-circuits this evolutionary strategy by reducing the number of years available for adult reproduction below that required to sustain the turtles.
tkarkos@sunjournal.com
“Blanding’s turtles are getting hammered in southern Maine, because they move across roads to lay their eggs in the soft shoulder sand,” state wildlife planner Sandy Ritchie said Thursday afternoon.
Over the past 13 years, the fish and wildlife service has intensified its efforts to learn more about the distribution of these rare turtles.
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