The bog turtle was listed as federally threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1997.
It is the smallest turtle in North America.
It is one of the smallest turtles in the world.
One of the best ways to get the information from the public and from people who are working
on bog turtle recovery is to bring everyone together.
And that’s the purpose of this meeting – is to bring key conservation partners together
to share their information on the status of the bog turtle.
I thought networking would be huge.
Meet some other professionals that work with this.
Also here some of the latest research in the area, in the Northern region.
So I think that was something that has been really beneficial.
And it’s just good to hear what’s going on in other places outside of New Jersey where
I primarily work.
These conferences seem like there’s a lot of people doing research and work with bog
turtles and I think it’s important to connect with people that are doing work on bog turtle
habitat in other places so that we can learn and share information and find out what’s
going on and what new information is coming out that we can use to better manage our sites.
This meeting meets several objectives actually, not only to bring in information on the status
of the bog turtle, but also for new staff to learn from the expertise of those who have
been working with the bog turtle for over 20 years.
And for folks who have been out there working to hear about new research results and the
results of the latest conservation efforts.
That’s a lot of what I’m involved in, the restoration and recovery of the species.
That’s kind of the fun part where we get involved in a little more research.
Radio-telemetry, even on just a single site kind of a scale.
Just gather more data to try to determine where these turtles are going, what they’re
going.
Add to the pool of knowledge that’s out there.
The exciting thing about having all these partners together is that we had such a diverse
group of people from a wide range of expertise.
We have biologists from a number of different agencies, as well as private consulting firms.
We have non-profit organizations who function for land conservation.
We have soil scientists and habitat restoration specialists.
We have wildlife veterinarians, law enforcement officers and even folks who are involved with
international trade.
Bringing all these people together, they all get the full picture of bog turtle conservation
and not just their own individual niche.
They see where their piece comes together in the whole.
They’re able to share the information that they might not otherwise have been able to
share.
Having all my experience working in the Southern population of bog turtles, I was really excited
to be able to listen to people that are working in the North.
A real important aspect of bog turtle habitat is the hydrology and there is a lot of variability
of wetlands.
We learned a lot about hydrology in soils at this meeting and realized that changing
the vegetation is certainly one tool that we can use.
But if we are dealing with an area where the hydrology has been altered, it really changes
the priority of our actions.
What I’ve learned from the conference for these past couple days that’s been really
helpful is what is working for management, what’s been effective.
Learning about some of the herbicide applications and how they’ve been effective.
That kind of information will be really useful to us to apply to our properties.
The energy that comes from having this group of folks coming together really gives momentum
for setting actions and the energy to continue on moving towards recovery for the species.
Trying to answer a basic conservation question of what is the unit of conservation for bog
turtles that we really need to focus in on.
It is a great thing to see how this process, the recovery process, works at a federal level.
I feel like I learned a lot about how this works and I’m really interested in seeing
what comes out of this meeting, potentially what is updated to the recovery plan.
And I think we have a really good, solid foundation that’s developing of communication amongst
these different sub-units or recovery units.
I think it’s pretty exciting, so I’m very optimistic going out of here.