Practical and Balanced
This is the research and mitigation arm of the Turtle Guardians program. Our collective work helps guide recovery actions and find smart balanced solutions between progress and conservation.
Research
- Population Ecology
- Mitigation solutions
Education
- Co-op student placements
- Workshops and training
Monitoring
- Road sweeps prior to maintenance and construction.
- Critical habitat
- Hotspot monitoring
- Species inventories
- Wetland evaluations (OWES) and assessments (including hydrological and hydrogeological).
Mitigation
- Emergency and vulnerable nest excavation, incubation and release.
- Road mitigation
- Pioneering ecopassage jump out fencing prototype installation and testing.
- Alternative nesting mounds
- Signage
- Habitat restoration and creation (subdivision habitat connectivity).
Current Focus of Research Projects
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?)
Demographic
- Population Ecology (7 year data set of road mortality and observations, including age classes, sex, and morphometrics/body condition) to decipher trends in populations against development and transportation patterns; and to assess biomass across varying landscapes and road networks. Also, to validate mitigation priorities).
- 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?)
- 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.)
Read more about our observations and ongoing research:
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.