Please make an effort to stop for turtles

[alfredo]

MUSKOKA - Every year at this time, our roads are filled with the unfortunate remains of hundreds of dead turtles that met their demise while attempting to find a place to lay their eggs. Many of these turtles are older than the roads that they were forced to cross and thus have no evolutionary way to adjust to the dangerous changes to their environment created by the roadways.
But, you can do your part to preserve these fascinating and vital members of our ecosystem by simply making your commitment to stop for turtles.
A few simple tips I have used over the years to help make this activity safe and effective:
Always make sure that you pull over at a safe location and do so without placing other motorists at risk. Use your hazard lights and be careful when entering traffic. Although saving a turtle is very important, it is not worth risking your life.
If you can’t avoid a turtle in your lane, centre it under your vehicle so your tires don’t crush it. The turtle will hide until you pass over and then continue on.
When approaching a turtle, point to it so that other drivers who see you will understand what you are doing and take appropriate action to avoid the turtle until you can get to it and remove it from the road. Again, don’t distract drivers, but give them a chance to take evasive action if it is safe to do so.
Always place the turtle on the side of the road that it is pointed towards. If you take it back to where it came from, it will likely turn around after you leave and try and cross again. Never relocate a turtle to another area and don’t take it home. They are not pets.
Wash your hands after touching any turtle or use a hand sanitizer.
Be careful around snapping turtles, especially large ones. Small ones can usually be carried safely if you hold them from the back of the shell, but even using a stick or another long-handled object to simply push them across the road works fine. The shell and skin of a turtle are very tough, so you won’t hurt it with a gentle push.
If the turtle you are moving is not a painted or snapping turtle, consider reporting it using the species at risk reporting form found on the Georgian Bay Biosphere web page (www.gbbr.ca). There is a good chance that if it is not one of the two more common turtles, then is it is likely a threatened species, making your good deed even more important.
Each female turtle, depending on the species, can lay up to 30 eggs. If everyone did their part and saved just five turtles a year (which I did this week on just one trip) then we could be adding literally thousands of new turtles to the population.
Given that numbers of all turtles (even snapping turtles) are falling, this would be a worthwhile way to spend a couple of minutes of your time; if even a few hundred of the tens of thousands of motorists made this commitment for a few weeks every year, we could probably make a significant impact.

[gofishing]

BRACEBRIDGE - Turtle safety has become a concern to residents of Peterson Road in Bracebridge.
Laurel Turansky is one of these residents and has requested permission from the town to put up turtle crossing signs in her area.
“I live on a dirt road and there are wetlands on both sides of the road,” said Turansky.
Peterson Road is located near Uffington, east of Bracebridge.
“The turtles are constantly crossing over, from one side to the other, or they’re laying their eggs on the side of the road.”
Turansky and three of her neighbours have agreed to pay for the signs that can be purchased from the Kids For Turtles organization in Orillia.
The signs are standard diamond warning signs and would be erected by Robert Bowles, an environmental consultant working with Kids For Turtles.
Bracebridge district Coun. Scott Young supported the request in council on Tuesday and questioned if there was more that could be done.
“I wonder if it’s possible for the town to purchase more of these signs and save them for similar requests in other areas,” said Young. “When you kill a turtle on the road it is usually an older female looking for a place to lay her eggs.”
Turansky says there are already signs in some areas of Muskoka and there are probably many other roads that need to alert drivers.
“We do see people deliberately running them over and we need people to be aware that this is a living creature. It has just as much right to live in this area as we do,” she said.

[Geeman]

Good article. I've on more than one occasion stopped to help turtles get across roads.