NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ANNOUNCES
Centenarian Turtle Found In Park

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A 100-year-old eastern box turtle was discovered September 16, at the William Floyd Estate, a mainland unit of the Fire Island National Seashore in New York. The box turtle was a study specimen of renowned naturalist John Treadwell "J.T." Nichols, who is credited with discovering the homing instincts and the home range of box turtles.

Working cooperatively with the National Park Service, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society found the centenarian turtle during a biological inventory of the park. The inventory was funded in part by the Natural Resource Challenge, a major effort to substantially improve how the NPS manages the natural resources under its care. One of the initiatives of the Challenge is a multi-year effort by the National Park Service to document the presence, abundance, and distribution of species in the National Park System and to help park managers make informed natural resource management decisions.

Researchers recaptured the turtle known as JN21/21, which was originally captured and marked by Nichols in 1921. JN21/21 was approximately 20 years old at the time making him the oldest known turtle at the William Floyd Estate. Park staff recaptured JN21/21 again in 1991.

Nichols marked each turtle by etching his initials, the date, and a number into the plastron, the hard coating that protects a turtle's underside, with a penknife. Nichols began monitoring box turtles in the area surrounding the William Floyd Estate in 1914 and wrote prolifically about their habits. He continued to monitor the turtles until his death in 1958, and his field notes indicate that he captured approximately 1,000 individual box turtles on the property. Both the National Park Service and the American Museum of Natural History in New York have copies of his field notes. The William Floyd Estate became a detached unit of Fire Island National Seashore in 1965. The National Park Service manages the grounds as a cultural landscape, maintaining the fields, forest, ponds and marsh.

Nichols wrote 1,000 articles and books on nature and traveled the globe. He paid his children five cents for each marked turtle and three cents for each unmarked turtle they collected while he was away from the estate. The turtles were kept in the window wells of the estate until Nichols return when he marked them and then released the turtles at the estate's flagpole. From his studies he determined that turtles have strong homing instincts and that their home range is approximately 220-yard diameter.

The turtle inventory ceased after Nichol's death until NPS Ranger Rich Stavdal began working at the estate in 1980. "Almost immediately I found a turtle marked by Nichols. Since then I've found 17 of his and marked over 680." Stavdal continues to monitor box turtles, but for the first time a full amphibian and reptile inventory was conducted this year with help from the Natural Resource Challenge program.

Wildlife Conservation Society researchers inventoried amphibians and reptiles at the William Floyd Estate for a six-month period. The scientists captured approximately 30 box turtles, bringing the marked population to more than 700. Wildlife Biologist Robert Cook, a box turtle expert at Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts said the goal of conducting inventories is to document the presence, abundance, and distribution of species. One of the fundamental missions of the National Park Service is to maintain native wildlife. Information gathered during the inventory will help to preserve and protect species through informed natural resource management, Cook said.

Researchers conduct systematic inventories using established methods, such as placing plywood and metal sheet "cover boards" on the property to attract amphibians and reptiles, searching for them under logs and brush and using live-traps, and other techniques. Inventories are important for documenting rare and important species and the habitats they depend on and provide a base-line for future monitoring of species populations. As a result of the inventory the presence of four-toed salamanders was documented for the first time on the estate grounds.

According to Stavdal the age of a turtle can be estimated by the presence of growth rings on the turtle's plastron and the condition of the rings. If Nichols hadn't marked JN21/21 researchers might have been fooled by the turtle's youthful appearance because JN21/21's rings were only slightly worn. Nichols' field notes indicate the turtle was about the same size when he found him more than 80 years ago. "We joked about JN21/21 not looking a day over 50," said Stavdal adding, "We could be handling turtles that are much older than we think."

According to Stavdal, Nichols' observations about turtles' home range appear to be true because turtles are being found 60 to 70 years later in the same location as Nichols found them.

According to Stavdal and Cook, the Floyd Estate represents the Northeast landscape 100 to 200 years ago. "A lot of the Northeast was agriculture. Now the park units that preserve areas as agricultural land are surrounded by developments and suburbanization," Cook said. The estate was cleared for agriculture and used as a plantation in 1724. The Floyd family later stopped farming, and only used the estate for a home in the country allowing a second-growth forest to emerge.

In 1938 a hurricane struck Long Island, New York, and New England. Trees throughout the Northeast were devastated. According to historical records the storm killed 700 people, destroyed 8,900 homes and buildings, left 63,000 homeless, had winds at 121 mph and storm surge at 17 feet over high tide, and toppled approximately two billion trees.

During the 1930s and 40s a series of wildfires burned through the area. In the 1950s and 60s the fields were reclaimed to provide hunting for family members. JN21/21 survived everything. "He has seen more than any of us. He lived through the '38 hurricane," Stavdal said.

What concerns the National Park Service more than the turtle's ability to survive hurricanes and fires is its ability to survive in habitat surrounded by roads, subdivisions, and backyards, said Cook.

According to Cook, "This underscores the importance of monitoring the species over time. Without monitoring we would not be able to detect the effects of landscape changes
on wildlife. Having monitoring programs that look at animal populations and the habitat they are in is a good way of putting the National Park Service in a position to know what happens to its wildlife as the landscape changes," Cook said.

Maintaining the estate's turtle population isn't always easy and requires staff members to be sensitive to the needs of the park's resources. Fields are mown during periods of inactivity such as hibernation and during dry weather when the turtles retreat to the woods. "The importance is to understand their seasonal movements so we don't impact them," Stavdal said.>

Although the turtle population at the estate appears stable, predators concern park natural resource managers. Park units that are located in suburban areas throughout the Northeast are experiencing an increase in raccoons and skunks, which are nest raiders. Because raccoons and skunks can gain easy access to food supplies from sources such as garbage they become subsidized predators and their numbers are increasing. Even though skunks, raccoons, and turtles have coexisted for thousands of years the natural balance can change when predator populations reach unnaturally high levels. Turtles are slow reproducers and lay just six to eight eggs per year and they are especially vulnerable until they develop a hard shell to protect them.

It is difficult to tell how many turtles are leaving the property in the hands of visitors, Stavdal said. Those who remove turtles from the estate are not only removing a natural resource they are removing part of a historical collection. It is violation of federal law to harass or remove wildlife from a national park.

The release of turtles that aren't part of the estate's turtles' gene pool concerns park managers. Releasing foreign turtles at the park may affect the estates historical turtle gene pool and put turtles not genetically prepared for harsh winters in jeopardy of death, said Cook. Many people don't realize that if they find a box turtle in Virginia and release it in New York that they have brought the animal to a place where it will be subjected to weather and other environmental factors that the turtle is not prepared for. "Their ancestors never experienced those conditions. Turtles are frequently moved and let go with good intentions, but often not with good results," Cook said.

Because of Nichols, Stavdal, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, the National Park Service has access to inventory information gathered for more than 80 years at the William Floyd Estate. Funding provided by the Natural Resource Challenge has enabled continuing inventories and provides valuable information to park managers, helping them to protect our nation's heritage.

"Inventories help us with informed decision making, for example ensuring that roads don't get built through important habitats. You need to know what species are at a site so you can plan and operate a park without negatively affecting its plants and wildlife. The ultimate goal is to ensure the preservation of native species and natural processes," Cook said.

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