Truro scientist finds link between box turtles and power lines
By Lee Roscoe, Banner Correspondent, 3/20/16, Wellfeet.Wickedlocal.com
It’s not easy keeping up with box turtles.
Dr. Ray Clarke, a scientist who spent three years tracking the land-roving reptiles through the woods of Truro and Wellfleet, learned that first-hand.
“It’s hard work. You’re out in 80 to 85 degrees, alone. It's fine going through the pine oak forest. But when you enter the wetlands it can become impenetrable. Once I had a fall over muck — the log broke and I started to sink in. Brier can tear right through your jeans. Cell phone service is spotty,” Clarke says.
His study focused on how the right-of-ways around the Outer Cape’s power lines might be affecting the breeding habits and survival of Eastern box turtles, which are listed as a species of special concern in Massachusetts. A Truro resident, he’s received degrees from McGill and Yale universities and taught ecology and “many kinds of biology,” including evolutionary and marine, at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’s now a professor emeritus. He wanted to avoid retirement’s shock with an ongoing science project, so he brainstormed with Robert Cook, Cape Cod National Seashore ecologist, and initiated a study to appease his curiosity about the relationship between power lines and box turtles.
Clarke wasn’t sure he’d find turtles under the lines, but because he knew from the scientific literature that these terrestrial turtles like to nest in open, disturbed places, he guessed he would.
He was correct. From 2011 to 2013, in May and June, he captured 18 females under NSTAR/Eversource power line right-of-ways from South Truro to North Wellfleet. As the turtles lay only four to six eggs, the nests were very hard to discover, so he qualifies the accuracy of whether they were nesting or not: "I only saw one turtle laying eggs, but the pattern of females moving to the right-of-way during the nesting season is pretty strong circumstantial support for that view."
With grants from the Cape Cod National Seashore and help from Lori Erb, who was surveying turtles statewide for the Mass. Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, Clarke placed radio transmitters on the backs of adult female turtles, tracking them with a radio antenna.
"Each turtle’s ‘ping’ is a separate frequency, so you know who you’re following. My expectation was that when the signal would get loudest you’d be near the turtle. But radio waves bounce off trees and hills, and the terrain was hilly, so it could get frustrating when I couldn’t track them efficiently."
It was a learning curve. “Using tracking equipment was new to me. I'm not a turtle guy. I’m a fish guy.” Describing years of field work, Clarke said he would scuba dive to do population studies of fishes of coral reefs, asking, “How can so many species, hundreds, exist together?” He wanted to understand how they compete and divide up niches, discovering in the process new information which he has published in scientific journals.
By Lee Roscoe, Banner Correspondent, 3/20/16, Wellfeet.Wickedlocal.com
It’s not easy keeping up with box turtles.
Dr. Ray Clarke, a scientist who spent three years tracking the land-roving reptiles through the woods of Truro and Wellfleet, learned that first-hand.
“It’s hard work. You’re out in 80 to 85 degrees, alone. It's fine going through the pine oak forest. But when you enter the wetlands it can become impenetrable. Once I had a fall over muck — the log broke and I started to sink in. Brier can tear right through your jeans. Cell phone service is spotty,” Clarke says.
His study focused on how the right-of-ways around the Outer Cape’s power lines might be affecting the breeding habits and survival of Eastern box turtles, which are listed as a species of special concern in Massachusetts. A Truro resident, he’s received degrees from McGill and Yale universities and taught ecology and “many kinds of biology,” including evolutionary and marine, at Sarah Lawrence College, where he’s now a professor emeritus. He wanted to avoid retirement’s shock with an ongoing science project, so he brainstormed with Robert Cook, Cape Cod National Seashore ecologist, and initiated a study to appease his curiosity about the relationship between power lines and box turtles.
Clarke wasn’t sure he’d find turtles under the lines, but because he knew from the scientific literature that these terrestrial turtles like to nest in open, disturbed places, he guessed he would.
He was correct. From 2011 to 2013, in May and June, he captured 18 females under NSTAR/Eversource power line right-of-ways from South Truro to North Wellfleet. As the turtles lay only four to six eggs, the nests were very hard to discover, so he qualifies the accuracy of whether they were nesting or not: "I only saw one turtle laying eggs, but the pattern of females moving to the right-of-way during the nesting season is pretty strong circumstantial support for that view."
With grants from the Cape Cod National Seashore and help from Lori Erb, who was surveying turtles statewide for the Mass. Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, Clarke placed radio transmitters on the backs of adult female turtles, tracking them with a radio antenna.
"Each turtle’s ‘ping’ is a separate frequency, so you know who you’re following. My expectation was that when the signal would get loudest you’d be near the turtle. But radio waves bounce off trees and hills, and the terrain was hilly, so it could get frustrating when I couldn’t track them efficiently."
It was a learning curve. “Using tracking equipment was new to me. I'm not a turtle guy. I’m a fish guy.” Describing years of field work, Clarke said he would scuba dive to do population studies of fishes of coral reefs, asking, “How can so many species, hundreds, exist together?” He wanted to understand how they compete and divide up niches, discovering in the process new information which he has published in scientific journals.
