56 Threatened Turtles Born at Iowa Zoo Released Into the Wild
Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University joined forces to raise the turtles that are considered a threatened species
The year-old turtles were released with tiny transmitters allowing their movements to be tracked for the next two monthsA group of year-old Blanding's turtles were released from the Blank Park Zoo and placed in their natural habitat.
Blanding's turtles are a threatened species, and as part of a partnering project between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the Blank Park Zoo, and Iowa State University, the agencies worked together to help the population.
"Blanding's turtles are so cool, they've got this bright yellow chin, and they kind of look like an army helmet with this dome shape of their shell," Dr. Karen Kinkead, wildlife diversity program coordinator for the Iowa DNR, told WHO Des Moines.
The turtles' parents are native to the Iowa wetlands. Now that their babies are one year old, they were released into a marsh in Guthrie County with tiny transmitters to track their movements and gather data.
'You definitely want to be putting them into a good Blanding's turtle habitat where they're gonna be able to thrive, so that's pretty much made up of wetlands,' Elizabeth Lang, a research associate at Iowa State University, told Iowa Local 5 News.
WHO Des Moines reports that Lang will spend her summer in the marsh tracking the turtles and monitoring their whereabouts.
Over the winter, the baby turtles made the Blank Park Zoo their home.
"The zoo's kept them over the winter for us, and they've kept them awake instead of allowing them to go to sleep for the winter," Kinkead told KCCI News. "So they've grown bigger than they would in the wild. Because they're bigger, it will be harder for some of their natural predators to swallow them whole."
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Kinead said she has concerns about the Blanding's turtle release: "I'm definitely a bit nervous. I hope that they do really well out there."
"To my knowledge, this is the first opportunity we've had to track the juveniles," Kinkead told WHO Des Moines. "And we suspect that the juveniles are not using the habitat the same way as the adults do because we just don't find them the way we do adults."
Kinkead said she believes the young turtles spend more time in the water than the adults.
The turtle's transmitters will last two months, allowing Lang and partnering technicians to track how the turtles spend their summer.
WHO Des Moines reports that the Blanding's turtle was placed on a threatened species list due to complications in successful nesting and habitat loss.
DNR is working to rebuild the Blanding's turtle population following a late winter storm that devastated the species 10 years ago.
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