{"id":1153,"date":"2008-10-23T11:58:52","date_gmt":"2008-10-23T15:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?page_id=1153"},"modified":"2012-10-09T16:29:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T21:29:41","slug":"species-critters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?page_id=1153","title":{"rendered":"Critters — Species"},"content":{"rendered":"

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About Index<\/a><\/h2>\n

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Information and background about the critters and the species that we study.\u00c2\u00a0 For facts about study sites and habitats, see Habitat \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Sites<\/span><\/a>.<\/h2>\n
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Eastern Box Turtles: The Long Goodbye<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n

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Habitat loss and fragmentation threatened the future of Eastern box turtles. Because they are so long-lived once they achieve adulthood, we often miss population declines until they crash. We see adult turtles \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 albeit in slowly diminishing numbers, but we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the lack of juvenile and sub-adult recruits into the local population. Male box turtle #78, a resident of the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, illustrates the long goodbye of the Eastern box turtle species. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Terrapin Survival: Swimming Against the Tide<\/a><\/p>\n

After barely surviving more than a century of direct assault as a gourmet meal, an already\u00c2\u00a0declining Northern diamondback terrapin population\u00c2\u00a0is\u00c2\u00a0today suffering continuous loss of habitat all along the Atlantic Coast. As more and more development occurs\u00c2\u00a0on salt marshes, estuaries, tidal rivers and coastal bays, nesting sites are lost to homes and driveways and roads and seawalls and landscaping, diversity of food sources declines, and water quality deteriorates. The result has been\u00c2\u00a0steadily dropping\u00c2\u00a0terrapin populations from Massachusetts to Texas, except in isolated areas where there have been intensive efforts to conserve habitat and to protect terrapins. Still, this video clip represents a metaphor for terrapin survival: swimming against the tide. As soon as conservation eforts slacken in any estuary system, a collapse of\u00c2\u00a0local populations is the outcome.\u00c2\u00a0 Since terrapins are non-migratory, once a local population is extirpated, the species disappears forever.\u00c2\u00a0 The future of terrapin survival is spring-loaded to\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009dOFF\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (extinction) and we must remain ever-vigilant in applying pressure to\u00c2\u00a0wedge the survival \u00e2\u20ac\u0153switch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into the\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009dON\u00e2\u20ac\u009d position.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0 About Index \u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 Information and background about the critters and the species that we study.\u00c2\u00a0 For facts about study sites and habitats, see Habitat \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Sites. \u00c2\u00a0 Eastern Box Turtles: The Long Goodbye Habitat loss and fragmentation threatened the future of Eastern box turtles. Because they are so long-lived once they achieve adulthood, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1084,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1153"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1153"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11971,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1153\/revisions\/11971"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}