The slowest of trailblazers: Better DNA testing means trafficked turtles can go home

On a warm, sunny morning in late August, a few dozen people assemble beside a barn in northern New Jersey.

It’s a festive gathering because today is a homecoming.

“Getting animals back in the wild is like the holy grail of conservation,” says Maurice Rodrigues, co-founder of the Turtle Conservancy. “Preserving them in the wild and putting them back in the wild — you can’t get any better.”

He gestures to a group of boxes sitting in the grass. Inside, there are 38 box turtles, each one the size of an outstretched hand. Their dark shells have streaks of bright yellow. Others are splotched in brilliant orange.

“Obviously, I find them beautiful,” Rodrigues says with admiration. But their exquisite appearance has a downside.

“Their value in the black market has skyrocketed,” he says. “This one turtle we’re looking at with the golden head and the golden shell — I mean, that’s $5,000.” He says people use them for medicinal purposes (despite there being “no proof at all [they help] cure anything”) and collect them as status symbols.

Such high bounties motivate the illegal trafficking of box turtles where they’re grabbed from their woodland habitat from a place like New Jersey and packaged and shipped abroad.

Sometimes the animals make it to a final destination but sometimes they’re intercepted. When that happens, Rodrigues is often among the first to know. He gets a phone call when turtles show up at rehab centers or airports like La Guardia or JFK to see if he can care for them.

“There’s a secret location in New Jersey where I’ve built enclosures for these confiscations,” he says. “Every year, I seem to have to expand because the rate of the confiscations seem to be going up.”

He says nearly all the box turtles near this barn today were once on their way to Hong Kong.

He hasn’t been able to return these — or any — animals to the wild. “You don't want to just get a turtle and just throw it anywhere,” says Rodrigues, especially because box turtles have a big range, spanning numerous states. So they wind up stuck in captivity.

However, DNA testing has gotten cheap enough and good enough that individual box turtles can finally be traced back to the state where they came from. These 38 animals are all New Jersey natives.

Ready, set, mosey

Brian Zarate welcomes the small group and explains the logistics of the morning. He’s a principal zoologist with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Fish and Wildlife, which has partnered with the Turtle Conservancy on today’s release.

“We’re going to hike about 10 or so minutes back into the woods,” he announces. “It’s a quick in-and-out trip.”

Zarate says box turtles aren’t endangered but state and federal officials are worried about their numbers. Today’s release adds a few more animals to the ranks.

The group treks into the woods, divvying up the boxes containing the turtles.

Soon, the team reaches a slight rise between a couple of swampier spots and stops in a small clearing.

They set the boxes down and open the tops up. Some of the box turtles pull themselves up and crane their little necks over the sides. Each one has a small radio transmitter epoxied to its shell to track its movements.

Then the group members start to let the turtles free. Zarate’s 8-year-old son Max is part of the group. “I’m putting this guy back in its home in the forest," he says.

In less than a minute, the boxes are empty and the turtles have ambled into the woods. The group breaks into applause.

Rodrigues is off to the side, taking it all in. He’s been waiting for this day for almost 30 years. He hopes the approach can serve as a model for releasing captive turtles.

“If this is a success, New Jersey can then pitch it to other neighboring states and across the country, maybe even Canada,” says Rodrigues. “This is going to be the beginning of something kind of amazing.”

Already, he says, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia have all shown interest.

“These are animals that live longer than us humans,” he says. For a moment, he’s overwhelmed by the significance of what’s happened here today in this wild patch of New Jersey.

“They just deserve a better life,” he says.

Copyright 2024, NPR

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