Release and relief: Giving young Western pond turtles a "head start"

This month at four secret, secluded pond sites around the state, 51 "head start" Western pond turtles will be set free. With endearing faces like miniature E.T.s, they've spent the past nine months growing as big as 3-year-old turtles could in the wild, munching on earthworms and crickets in safe, monitored water tubs behind the scenes at Seattle's zoo.

Part of the Woodland Park Zoo's Western Pond Turtle Recovery Project, these reptiles are listed by Washington state as endangered, and for the past 17 years researchers have been working to increase their chances for survival. "There are only 325 species of turtles in the world, and human activities affect turtles to a greater degree than many other types of animals," said Dana Payne, curator of reptiles and point person for the zoo's turtle recovery project, a partnership with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Zoo in Portland. "They've been around for 200 million years and are probably in the worst shape they've been in since the dinosaur extinction. This is our West Coast turtle, there's only one, and we have to take care of it."

Though once widespread in streams, ponds and lakes around Seattle, you're unlikely to meet a Western pond turtle in a city pond today — though you might glimpse common cousins such as the painted turtle, which is native, and the non-native red-eared slider. In the early 1900s, Western pond turtles were overharvested for food. Then came introduced bullfrogs and bass, which effortlessly gobble up young turtles. Habitat destruction and the fact that these turtles take 10 years to reach sexual maturity further contributed to their rapid decline. By 1990, only pockets of survivors were found in Klickitat and Skamania counties, with a few isolated individuals stranded elsewhere without mates.

Numbers are building

"There were only about 150 in Washington when the project began and now there are more than 1,000," said Payne, beaming like a proud papa, his office stacked to the ceiling with reptile reference books. "This is the zoo's longest-running and most successful conservation effort."

Unlike birds and mammals, reptiles are born with nearly the full body of knowledge they need to live, so they transition easily from captivity to freedom. "Turtles are hard-wired to survive, all they need is a chance," Payne said. Microchip implants like those used in cats and dogs allow researchers to track them, and recent surveys show a head-start survival rate of almost 100 percent.

Payne's first pet was a "dime-store turtle" — one of the ubiquitous red-eared sliders once found at Woolworth's, complete with a plastic dish and miniature palm tree. He now advocates against such purchases because most people are not prepared to care for a pet for 50 years or more. Western pond turtles can live up to 70 years, a conservative estimate for most turtle species.

"The best thing people can do for a native reptile is to not buy non-native pets," he said, remembering a call he once had from an elderly woman looking for a home for a turtle she'd had 60 years. Most turtle pets are not so lucky, relegated to a life of being passed from one home to the next, eventually neglected or released into local wetlands. Seattle waterways are full of such "mercy releases," contributing to a growing non-native population.

Payne, who has always loved animals and reptiles, in particular, first glimpsed the wonders of Woodland Park Zoo from the seat of his stroller, as his mom wheeled him around the grounds in the mid-1950s. Raising alligator lizards in his room at home as a teenager, Payne found his dream job volunteering in the zoo's Reptile House, which led to a lifelong career. After serving as a reptile keeper at the Fresno Zoo for two years, he returned to Seattle, working his way from bird keeper back to reptiles, eventually taking his current job as curator.

Well-disguised

"You'd think finding a turtle would be really, really easy, but you have to be incredibly stealthy," Payne said. "Stalking them reminds me of being a soldier belly-down in the grass, wanting more than anything not to get caught."

When a female Western pond turtle leaves the security of her watery world to head off on an instinct-driven quest to find the perfect spot to dig a nest for her eggs, she's stealthy beyond compare. Chunks of Columbia River basalt dot fields around one of the monitored research ponds — its location a secret, to protect the rare inhabitants. The basalt chunks look exactly like turtle shells, much to Payne's chagrin.

In search of a new nest from which to gather eggs, he waits, barely breathing, watching for tiny movements in the grass that will betray a turtle's movements, then advances with extreme caution. When he finally sees a turtle digging (up to two hours later), he relaxes a little, still careful to remain still. After shaping a flask-shaped hole, the mother turtle tips her tail-end into the hold and lays up to 11 eggs.

As she begins her trek back to the pond, Payne places a wire cage over the nest to protect the eggs from raccoons and coyotes. Roughly three months later, researchers return to collect the eggs, which must remain in the exact orientation in which they are found to protect developing embryos. They are oh-so-delicately transported to the zoo for special head-start care.

Thanks to the painstaking interventions of Payne and his fellow turtle enthusiasts, it looks like Western pond turtles won't end up like Lonesome George the Galapagos giant tortoise. Called the earth's "rarest living creature" — a subspecies from an island where no other tortoises remain — he's the very last of his kind.

Freelance writer Kathryn True, of Vashon Island, is a regular contributor to Northwest Weekend. Contact her through her Web site: www.kathryntrue.com