In spring, box turtles emerge from their underground winter dens. Drivers across the Midwest and Great Plains may spot them on the roads.
The creatures are particularly vulnerable this time of year to getting hit by cars or plucked from the wild by curious observers as they trek to their summer stomping grounds.
“ We regularly have turtles that travel 10, 15 football field lengths” between where they overwinter and where they spend the warm months, box turtle scientist Benjamin Reed said. “That often includes crossing roads.”
Reed, associate professor of biology at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, has studied ornate box turtles in Kansas and Nebraska for 13 years, including by tracking them with radio telemetry equipment. This species is native to Great Plains grasslands.
Far from the lethargic and sedentary creatures people may have witnessed in captivity, Reed says ornate box turtles are active, hyperalert, resourceful creatures. They can scout up to 130 acres of land annually for their eclectic diets of carrion, fungi, fledgling birds, crayfish, berries, flowers and more.
In the latest episode of Harvest Public Media’s podcast Up From Dust, Reed tells all about the complex and surprising lives of these turtles.
He hopes to teach more people about these animals and to encourage them to rethink the common Midwestern practice of taking them home as temporary or permanent pets.
“What I’m trying to convince people to do is maybe enjoy these turtles out in the wild,” Reed said. “It takes a long time for a turtle to replace a reproducing turtle that has been taken from the wild.”
That’s because ornate box turtles need to live to age 10 or so before starting to reproduce. Even then, in Reed’s experience, the females only lay one to three eggs every few years.
This means each box turtle that gets crushed by a vehicle or snagged for a backyard pen represents a real loss for the wild population, he said.
Threats to box turtles
Studying trends in ornate box turtle populations is difficult because not many scientists study the species in depth, and historical data is lacking in many places.
Still, what data does exist suggests cause for concern, Reed said.
“There is research on various states that have historical data that have shown ornate box turtles have declined,” he said. “There’s one well-studied population here in Kansas that – that population is now just totally gone. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
But some parts of the Great Plains still have robust populations, which is why Reed wants to raise public awareness about the species and its plight, in hopes of securing its long-term survival.
Ornate box turtles face a host of challenges. Here’s the short list.
- Habitat loss. Most of the continent’s grasslands — this species’ habitat — have already been converted into cropland, cities and woodland. The trend continues. For example, the World Wildlife Fund found that in 2022 alone nearly 2 million more acres of Great Plains grasslands were turned into crops.
- Illegal poaching. Poachers catch and smuggle turtles to sell as exotic pets or to sell their shells or meat.
- Climate change. Armadillos are spreading northward amid milder winters and other human changes to the environment. These animals dig up turtle nests to eat the eggs. Climate change could also skew the ratio of male to female box turtles, because as with other kinds of turtles, box turtle eggs develop their sex based on nest temperatures.
- Crossing roads. Box turtles often die crossing roads, for example while trying to reach their overwintering dens or nesting spots.
- Some people take turtles from the wild as temporary or permanent pets. In Great Plains states, this can mean putting ornate box turtles in one’s backyard or in a terrarium. In recent years, Kansas wildlife commissioners lowered the legal number that people can possess from five to two because of concern that ornate box turtles are on the decline.
- Turtle racing. People catch turtles for races at county fairs and similar events in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and other states. The Missouri-based Turtle Conservation Group conducted a study of turtle races and estimates that thousands of turtles get plucked from the wild each year for races. In 2021, it found that most were box turtles. Its concerns include the risk of spreading diseases among the animals or hurting their chances at survival by failing to return them to the exact places where they were found, where they know where to find food, winter dens and other needs. The group has developed a list of potential changes to turtle races intended to address these and other problems.
How to help box turtles
Reed has a list of ways to help box turtles. Here are a few.
Firstly, he recommends against taking them as pets or for turtle racing.
Instead, he recommends visiting a zoo to see box turtles or adopting an injured one from a wildlife rehabilitator.
Rehabilitators take in turtles that have sustained serious injuries from car strikes, such as losing a limb. Once the animals are stable, they need volunteers to adopt the ones that cannot safely return to the wild.
Rehabilitators teach adopters how to care for ornate box turtles, which includes never keeping this species in an aquarium like an aquatic turtle, because the box turtle will die.
Secondly, if you are able to help a box turtle cross the road without putting yourself in danger, Reed encourages people to do so. But he said it’s important to put the animal on the side of the road it was headed toward — even when the direction doesn’t seem to make sense.
This is because they have excellent navigation skills and have a specific route or destination in mind. If you bring them back to the side of the road where they began, they will probably just try to cross it again, he said.
He would like to see communities design more roads with features that help turtles and other small animals survive the crossing.
“Culverts under roads would do a huge amount for many, many species,” he said.
He also recommends supporting efforts to protect grasslands from development, as well as opting for native vegetation in as many places as possible — including yards, parks, pastures and the margins around roads and crops — to provide food and shelter for turtles.
Another helpful measure: Not clipping the grass and other vegetation in lawns, ditches and hayfields so short.
“ Raise the mower deck taller than the turtle,” he said, which means more than four inches off the ground. “You would not believe the number of turtles we find mowed over and killed.”
Finally, Reed recommends that landowners who are conducting prescribed burns of grasslands can help box turtles by carrying out those fires between mid-November and mid-March if possible, because the turtles are underground then.
Another option, he said, is burning some patches of prairie and leaving others unburned as havens for box turtles and other wildlife. This technique is called patch burning.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is an environment reporter for Harvest Public Media and host of the environmental podcast Up From Dust. You can follow her on Bluesky or email her at celia (at) kcur (dot) org.
Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
