A program to bolster the diamond terrapin population that is a Jersey Shore conservation tradition has expanded this spring to include year-round GPS tracking to learn more about the unique reptiles.
Dr. Lisa Ferguson, Director of Research and Conservation at the Wetlands Institute, teaches kindergarteners from the Avalon Stone Harbor Elementary school about diamondback terrapins, as the kindergarteners release them into the Stone Harbor marshes in a program set up by the Wetlands Institute and Stockton University, at the Wetlands Institute in Stone Harbor, NJ, in Philadelphia, June 5, 2024.County marches where they would hopefully continue to grow and eventually reproduce.
The terrapins released last week all came from eggs harvested from some of the several hundred mother terrapins killed on local roadways last year. Raised for nearly a year in a special head start program, they are incubated at a higher temperature to ensure they are born female, said Ferguson. When they are released the following year, they’re closer to the size of a three-year-old terrapin reared in the wild. The head start gives them a better chance at survival.
Members of the public are also encouraged to help grown terrapins safely cross roadways. Very often, they’re female terrapins moving between their marsh habitat and higher ground where they lay their eggs.Terrapins are the only turtles that live their entire lives in coastal salt marshes’ brackish waters — a mix of saltwater and freshwater. They eat salt marsh snails, which helps prevent snails from overgrazing marsh grasses and aids in maintaining the marsh ecosystem.
Ferguson said there is some indication that head start terrapins may become sexually mature earlier than the approximately seven years required for their fellow females that spend their first year in the wild. That could give an added boost to the survival of a creature under consideration for status as a species of special concern by the state of New Jersey., a program that sends orphaned terrapin hatchlings to be raised in the state’s schools for the year before it’s time to release them.
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