My interest in Box Turtles was first kindled by the many turtles I found as I wandered around the woods near my boyhood home in what is now the Turkey Haven Preserve of Western Wildlife Corridor. We would pick them up, check out the beady red or brown eyes, let the dog sniff them and put them back on the ground.
The Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene Carolina Carolina) is one of 6 extant subspecies of the common box turtle. The brown shell has markings which can be orange, yellow or red or any combination of these colors which provide camouflage among the leaves on the forest floor. The Eastern Box Turtles is classified as vulnerable species, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, for being threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatening its survival and reproduction improve.
Years ago, I began taking pictures of the animals and wildflowers that are found in our preserves. This, of course, included Box Turtles. In 2014 I learned that the complicated designs on Box Turtle shells could be unique for each turtle, just as fingerprints are for humans. I organized my pictures so that I could develop a listing of the number of turtles we had found in each preserve and could determine the number of times I had seen the same turtle. Now, this isn’t a detailed rigorous scientific experiment, but it is a careful listing of observations that can give some idea of the number of Box Turtles we have in our preserves.
Individual Box Turtles found in our preserves:
Buckeye Trace 77
Kirby 80
Whitetail Woods 17
Delshire 15
Bender Mountain 48
Total 237
The numbers show that the Eastern Box Turtle population is doing very well in the Western Wildlife Corridor and we have even observed baby turtles in recent years. The large population indicates thar our preservation efforts are working and the Eastern Box Turtle will always have a home here. By protecting and preserving the wooded hillsides that turtles find so welcoming, we assure their survival into the future.
