A helping hand for snapping turtles

Oka National Park released more than a hundred baby snapping turtles into the wild on Thursday. An initiative aimed at giving better chances to this species, of which only 1 in 1,000 individuals reach adulthood.

While you are still an embryo inside an egg, you have to hope that you will not be spotted by a fox, a raccoon or a skunk. Once you have emerged from your shell, you will have to avoid pike or great egrets for over a year. It is only once you have reached the age of one year, sometimes two, that your chances of survival will greatly improve since your size will immediately discourage most predators.

Like other turtle species in Quebec, the path of a snapping turtle is strewn with pitfalls and those that reach adulthood (20 years) are true survivors. In Oka National Park, west of Montreal, the snapping turtle is one of three species of turtles present with the map turtle and the painted turtle, says Hans Davila, naturalist technician at the Société des établissements de plein air du Québec (SEPAQ).

The snapping turtle is the largest turtle found in Quebec. An adult turtle can weigh about 18 kg. It is not considered a threatened species in Quebec: at the federal level, however, it is listed as a species of concern, mainly due to the decline of its wetland habitat. Six of the eight species found in Quebec are in difficulty, but the snapping turtle is considered “common and widespread,” according to the Atlas of Amphibians and Reptiles of Quebec.

Why then pay special attention to the snapping turtle in Oka National Park? “Only 10 to 20% of the nests are protected in the park and the predation rate is very high. For all the nests we have found, 100% of the eggs are eaten by predators,” says Hans Davila.

“SEPAQ’s mission is to monitor turtle populations in Oka Park and to ensure the surveillance and protection of nests,” emphasizes Marie-Pierre Lessard, director of conservation at the Aquarium du Québec, affiliated with SEPAQ.

With this new project, the goal is to check if it is possible to increase the survival rate of the eggs. “We put them in an incubator at the aquarium hoping to have a higher success rate,” she adds.

Last Thursday, Mr. Davila and his colleagues released 112 12-week-old baby turtles in the Petite Baie area of ​​Oka Park. Dozens of amazed children watched the operation, watching the turtles begin to swim in the wild for the very first time in their short lives. “With the eggs, we were hoping for a success rate of 70-80%. We got 100%! We are very satisfied,” says Marie-Pierre Lessard.

How many will succeed in reaching next year?

“We won’t be able to know this year. Our first challenge was to know if our hatching protocol was up to par. With this species, we had to make sure that our parameters were perfect. We could eventually set up a project to monitor our hatchings by marking the turtles that we release,” says M.^me Lessard.

But there will definitely be a follow-up to the project, she says, specifying that eventually, a similar approach could be attempted with other species of turtles present in Oka National Park.

According to Marie-Pierre Lessard, the first year of this project is a success that she is delighted with. “We have just given these turtles five times more chances of reaching adulthood.”