Since many of the turtles presented to KTTC are females that are looking for nesting sites, our ‘headstarting’ program came about as a natural extension of the hospital. Eggs are collected, incubated, and hatched at the centre, and we anticipate that the number will increase this year from the 1000 that we incubated last year. For the first time, we have received funding to carry out post-release studies on some of these turtles. A group of Blanding’s turtles will be released and tracked over the following seasons using radio telemetry, to ensure that they are surviving and behaving like wild Blanding’s turtles. This work is necessary, to show that the headstarting project is a viable conservation strategy. Biologists Christina Davy, Brennan Caverhill and James Paterson, are lending their extensive expertise to this project, and are mentoring Dr. Carstairs while she gets this underway.
