Practical and Preventative
Welcome to TG Research and Mitigation. We are dedicated to finding clear and unbiased answers to pressing questions; to using science to guide conservation, and to assist in Private-Public cooperation to design better and more balanced development projects and mitigative solutions.
For Informed and Balanced Solutions
The Turtle Guardians Program is evolving to lead research projects in order to answer emerging questions in conservation science that can inform best management practices and support development that achieves a balance between current and future needs and generations.
Research
Collecting and analyzing field data to support real-world mitigation solutions.
- Behavioral Ecology: Learning how reptiles behave to sculpt projects around their activities, not through them.
- Physiology: How are past and future human activities impacting the unique functioning of reptiles? Focusing on contaminants and emerging disease.
- Demography: Supporting mitigation goals by accommodating for reptile population health, structure, and location.
Education
Transferring knowledge of complex topics in bite-sized ways
- Lectures and presentations for post-secondary institutions and conferences.
- Co-op student placements
- Workshops
- Professional development, involving training and online courses for students, practitioners, conservation groups and governments.
- Certifications (coming soon)
Monitoring
To provide a consulting-style service to developers, roads departments, mining/forestry, governments and landowners.
- Road sweeps prior to maintenance and construction.
- Critical habitat
- Hotspot monitoring
- Species inventories
- Wetland evaluations (OWES) and assessments (including hydrological and hydrogeological).
Mitigation
Provide conservation-minded solutions to biodiversity threats in the early stages of a project. Mitigating risk without compromising project quality.
- Emergency and vulnerable nest excavation, incubation and release.
- Road mitigation
- Pioneering ecopassage jump out fencing prototype installation and testing.
- Alternative nesting mounds
- Signage
- Hibernacula (snake) installation
- Habitat restoration and creation (subdivision habitat connectivity).
- Emergency offsetting only (coming soon).
Current Focus of Research Projects
Behavioural
- Influence of pheromones on dispersal (Do pheromones influence how hatchling turtles disperse after emerging from the nest? If so, what are the implications of turtle population declines?)
- GPS tracking of adult turtles (How might adult turtles respond to development within their home range? Is soft translocation a viable solution to emergency relocation or captive release?)
Physiological
- Egg Implosions (Why are eggs imploding, and extension projects such as wetland ecology studies, birth defect rates, nesting synchronization, etc.)
- Maternal Body Condition (Does maternal body condition influence clutch size and egg diameter in Snapping Turtles? Does anthropogenic activity play a role in BCI, and therefore fitness?)
- Presence of Blood in SNTU Musk (Why does musk vary is colour, and is it indicative of exposure to environmental contaminants, disease, or improper handling?)
Demographic
- Nesting Hotspots (Where are turtles nesting, when, and how can we use this data to mitigate projects in that area? How can we provide turtles with a safer nesting site?)
- Road Associated Turtle Observations (Are trends in road associated turtle observations changing? Monitors injury and mortality rates, species and sex most impacted, and identifies mortality hotspots as candidates for mitigation.)
- Digital Plastron Recognition (Can we apply technology to long term mark-recapture, while retaining reliability? By proving effectiveness of plastron and bridge recognition, we can eliminate laborious, invasive, and ineffective shell notching, temporary marking, and PIT tagging.)
Collaboration
We work in partnership with Universities and Colleges, Students and Governments.
We would like to thank the following for their support of this crucial research and mitigation:
Species at Risk Stewardship Fund, the Bernard and Norton Wolfe Family Foundation, BioTalent, EcoCanada, Community Nominated Priority Places Program, Municipal Road Departments of Haliburton, Peterborough, and City of Kawartha Lakes, Trent University, University of Toronto, Laurentian University, and Tim McCaw Construction.