Challenges of Connecticut's Box Turtles

All within a matter of seconds, my mind overloaded with possible explanations for what I was looking at: a new species, a mythological creature, a freak of nature. But once the situation became clear to me, I realized it wasn’t some hybrid beast; it was just suppertime here at Wharton Brook State Park.
I was about to run the mile back to my house to get a camera, but the more I moved the more I frightened the northern water snake that was trying to swallow an entire sunfish at once. Finally, my presence was too much for him and he spat up his meal and disappeared between the stones of the brook.
I felt bad for disturbing the feeding snake because reptiles had been good to me all last week. Just a few days before, I set out on a hike on the blue-blazed Tunxis Trail in Southington. Not even a quarter mile into the woods, I came across a turtle, its high-domed shell camouflaged much more appropriately for autumn than for August. Its shell was also the clue that made it easy to pick her out of a lineup of turtles in my field guide, though the name the book gives her is unfortunately becoming more and more of a misnomer: "Common Box Turtle."
According to the Department of Environmental Protection, the box turtle is becoming less and less common. In 2004, a DEP advisory committee focusing on reptiles and amphibians for a revision of Connecticut’s List of Endangered, Threatened, and Special Concern Species was particularly alarmed by the decline of the state’s box turtles.
"This group of herpetologists is very concerned about the box turtle," says Julie Victoria, a biologist with the DEP’s Wildlife Diversity Project and facilitator for the Reptile and Amphibian Advisory Committee. She cites a variety of issues that threaten the box turtle in Connecticut.
"The number one reason why the numbers are declining is road mortality," says Victoria. "Box turtles have a very small home range. It can be between one acre to five acres. Usually, once they get into that home range, they never leave it."
Therefore, when people relocate turtles in an attempt to bring them to a seemingly better habitat, they are actually doing the animal a disservice. The turtles try to return to their original territory, where mates and food sources are known to them, and often have to cross busy roads to do so.
"They don’t see the car as being an enemy, so they get killed," says Victoria. If motorists do see a turtle, they are asked to simply carry it to the side of the road the animal was facing.
When box turtles do survive these challenges, they can live for decades, sometimes well beyond the human life span. There have even been instances where a turtle’s shell displayed Native American carvings from over a hundred years earlier.
I was curious about how old the Tunxis Trail Turtle was, as she (a female’s eyes are brown while a male’s are usually red) seemed to be on the larger side of the five to six-inch average shell size, a sign- at least to me- that she has done well here.
"You’d have to see the belly," said Victoria. "A species that lives a long time like that, they have a lot of wear on the bottom shell so you usually can’t accurately age it."
This life span, ironically, is what has made the box turtle such an attractive pet to bring home, which is another threat to the species as a whole.
"That is a big problem," says Victoria. "We have changed the law so that you may not possess a box turtle."
In 1993, the DEP put a one animal limit to the number of box turtles a resident was allowed to own. Anyone who had more than one at the time of the new regulation was supposed to contact the Wildlife Division, but no one did, according to Victoria. Five years later, the DEP made it illegal to bring a box turtle home at all. In addition, the box turtle is protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (www.cites.org).http://www.cites.org).
With all these other challenges to face, I was concerned to see that three hours later, the Tunxis Trail Turtle hadn’t moved an inch. Victoria, however, said that this is normal behavior, especially in the heat we’ve recently experienced.
"Like turtles hibernate in the winter," she explained, "sometimes in the summer they find these little wet areas and they pretty much shut down and just sit there until the heat has passed."
The concern I felt reminds me that most people have not purposely harmed the box turtle. It seems to be our instinct to want to admire, protect and coexist with the animals we meet in the woods.
In the case of a box turtle, though, if she’s in the woods and not in the street, most likely she’s doing okay on her own.
"Hikers should leave them alone," said Victoria. "That’s what these turtles need."
To tell you the truth, my walk to Wharton Brook later in the week was a shot in the dark to find more box turtles. Instead, I met a two-tailed snake. I went back the next morning, hoping to surprise it again, maybe during breakfast this time.
But he was gone. The dead fish was still trapped in an eddy, its eyes a little foggier now. As I walked along the brook, a garter snake seeped down into the grassy bank. A common species, I thought, but never to be taken for granted.