Turtles can re-establish themselves in the face of a declining habitat, given a sufficient amount of time and relief from harvesting, according to new research from the Florida Museum of Natural History.
In 1969, Max Nickerson, herpetology curator for the museum and co-author of the study, said he, along with researchers, began monitoring the northern map turtle population in a spring-fed river system in the Ozark region of Missouri. However, in 1980, they discovered something was wrong.
The number of female turtles in the area was not what it should have been, Nickerson said. The researchers received word from locals that harvesters had been capturing the turtles to sell in the turtle meat market.
It wasn’t until 2007 that the population returned to its 1969 levels.
“A lot of turtle biologists have not thought it would be possible for turtle populations to turn around like this,” he said. “Of course, the timeline is a little lengthy.”
Both Missouri and North Central Florida have some of the highest concentrations of major springs in North America, and both have experienced habitat degradation, Nickerson said.
Eric Suarez, a 27-year-old UF wildlife ecology and conservation graduate student, said biologists need to do a better job educating the public on turtle population decline.
“People should care in the largest sense because they are disrupting food webs and food chains,” he said.
