How you can help save turtles crossing the road

What's an expectant turtle to do?

It's that time of year when pregnant turtles must leave their watery homes and search for high and dry spots to lay their eggs.

Unfortunately, their journeys to nesting sites sometimes can take the creatures across roads and highways. And, as we all know, turtles aren't exactly known for their speed and mobility.

So, despite their hard shells, the trek across busy roads leaves them little protection against fast-moving cars or trucks. Through nobody's fault, a good number of the reptiles end their lives as speed bumps.

“June is pretty much the prime time of the nesting season for turtles,” said Gary Glowacki, a wildlife biologist with the Lake County Forest Preserve District. “Some of the species travel long distances and cross a lot of roads.”

With that in mind, area forest preserve district officials are cautioning drivers to pay closer attention to the road while driving.

“A turtle is not like a rabbit or a squirrel that's going to dart in front of you,” said Dan Thompson, an ecologist with the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. “Most turtle collisions are avoidable if people would just drive cautiously and safely.”

So far this year, experts at Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn say they have treated “a minimal” number of injured turtles.

But they say the nesting season, which runs through early July, hasn't peaked yet.

“We're just getting into the heart of it now,” said Kevin Luby, a naturalist with Willowbrook.

Regardless of the time of day, Luby said drivers need to keep their eyes open.

“Any object on the road could potentially be a turtle,” Luby said. “They could be anywhere from the size of an old silver dollar to the size of a spare tire in the case of a female snapping turtle.”

It's up to drivers to be aware and try to avoid hitting turtles because the animals have a primitive sense of hearing. “Car horns and flashing lights don't faze them,” Luby said.

While it seems counterintuitive to us for a slow-moving reptile to even try to cross a busy suburban road, the turtles are just following their long-established paths.

“Some turtles exhibit a high degree of nest-site fidelity, meaning they return to the same spot to nest year after year — regardless of whether a road was put there,” Glowacki said.

And since some species of turtles can live a long time, they might have been making the same journey since before some roads were built.

“These turtles can be taking the same nesting migration route for several decades,” Glowacki said. “You can imagine the landscape has changed quite a bit in that time.”

DuPage forest preserve officials are cautioning drivers to never place themselves or others in danger by stopping abruptly on busy roads. Instead, motorists should slow down and put on their vehicle's flashers to alert other drivers.

What should drivers do if they spot a turtle on the road but are too late to slow down and go around it?

Thompson suggests trying to straddle the turtle to avoid hitting it with a vehicle's tires.

“Sometimes you have no time to react,” he said. “So center it and straddle it.”

If people want to stop and carry a turtle across the road, the first thing they need to do is to make sure they're not putting themselves in jeopardy, officials said.

Glowacki said people also need to remember that turtles know exactly where they're going.

“We always recommend they move the turtle to the side of the road that it was heading,” Glowacki said.

If you turn a turtle around, it's simply going to try to cross the road again, he said.

To move a turtle, pick it up with both hands, one on either side of the animal's body. Lifting a turtle by the tail can damage its spinal cord, officials said.

No one should ever pick up a snapping or spiny soft-shell turtle, experts warn. Both are large species that can become aggressive and bite when handled.

Thompson said one point he “can't stress enough” is that you should never take a turtle and move it somewhere else.

“If you take an animal out of its home and drop it in the neighborhood detention basin, it's not going to want to live there,” Thompson said. “It's going to leave. And now it's going to have multiple miles to try to find its way home. It'll never make it.”

Some pregnant Blanding's turtles in DuPage won't have to worry about crossing busy roads this year.

They've been given a safe place to lay their eggs as part of the forest preserve district's Blanding's turtle recovery program. Since 1996, the district has been trying to rebuild the endangered species' numbers in DuPage.

Once a turtle lays her eggs, she's released and her eggs are placed in an incubator. Then when the hatchlings are old enough, they're released into the wild.

It's estimated that about 2,400 young turtles have been released through the program.

“Turtles have a very high mortality rate,” Thompson said. “But just by sheer numbers, some are bound to survive. We are really starting to see our efforts pay off.”

Found an injured turtle?

Anyone who finds an injured turtle should consult Willowbrook Wildlife Center, 525 S. Park Blvd., in Glen Ellyn. The facility cares for injured native species and strives to return them to the wild.

Employees and volunteers are available to answer questions 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily at (630) 942-6200. After hours, an automated system provides information.