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Gulf Coast Turtle & Tortoise Society News - June, 2005BCBE Breeder Sale June 18 & 19!The Bayou City Breeders Expo will be held from 10 AM to 5 PM on June 18 & 19, 2005 and will feature supplies, feeder animals, gifts and ONLY captive bred herps. GCTTS has been invited to offer an educational booth for several years at this event and volunteers are needed. Members and those interested in joining GCTTS with a basic knowledge of turtle/tortoise husbandry are welcome to offer care sheets to visitors, address the reality of healthy turtle care and other topics such as conservation, species identification and herp vet referrals. We do have sufficient volunteers for Saturday but are in special need of people able to help at our booth on Sunday (Father's Day). Please let us know at info@gctts.org or the hotline, 281-443-3383, by June 15 if you plan to help at our booth or exhibit a turtle. The Expo will be held at the Clarion Inn, located at 500 North Belt East, between Imperial Valley Dr. and the Hardy Toll Road. Admission is $4 for children under 12 and $6 for adults. The June 2005 expo features additional educational opportunities in the form of live local venomous and non-venomous snake ID displays and speaker talks and presentations, which are included free with your paid admission to the expo. This is an excellent opportunity for interested residents, especially scouts, to learn more about our native snake species and how to correctly identify venomous snakes. These displays and lectures can help Boy Scouts meet some of the requirements for their Reptile and Amphibian Merit Badge. Additionally, all scouts that wear their Scout dress uniforms to the Expo will receive half-price admission! Complete info on this event can be found at: http://www.houstonherp.com/BCBEbody.html Children's Programs!The LaMarque Library has asked GCTTS to make a presentation about turtles and tortoises on June 8, 2005, from 2 to 3 PM. Wendy Browne will be the speaker and invites anyone wishing to assist or exhibit turtles to let us know. The Hitchcock Public Library has asked GCTTS to make a presentation about turtles and tortoises on July 5, 6, 7, OR 8 and we are still looking for speakers for the Library. Hitchcock is on Hwy 6, about 5 miles west of I-45 in Galveston county. Wendy Browne will be the speaker for a children's program at the May S Bruce Public Library in Santa FE, TX on July 20, 10:30 am. Anyone wishing to assist or exhibit turtles to let us know. The Houston SPCA has asked GCTTS for a speaker for June 9th, June 23rd, and Aug 4th at 11am for children 9-11 years old. The SPCA is located at 900 Portway Dr, just north of Memorial Park. Wendy Browne will be the speaker on June 9th and 23rd, and Julie Young will speak at the Aug 4 event. Anyone wishing to assist or exhibit turtles, let us know. GCTTS has been invited to make a presentation at the Friendswood Public Library this summer. GCTTS member Bob Smither will be at the Library, 416 South Friendswood Drive, Friendswood, Texas 77546 (281-482-7135), from 1:30 to 2:30PM on June 15, 2005. The Library would like to have an additional turtle presentation during the summer. Times and dates available are every Wednesday in June and July from 1:30-2:30 p.m and the presentation would be directed toward 8-10 year olds. If you are interested in doing another of these talks, or assisting our speaker/exhibiting turtles at the June 15 program please let us know. If you would like to make any of these presentations or exhibit your turtles, please let us know before at info@gctts.org or the hotline 281-443-3383. Thanks! Annual East Texas Herp Breeder Sale & Expo!The 15th Annual East Texas Herpetological Society's Breeder Expo and Educational Exhibit will be held Sunday, September 11th at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, located at 12801 Northwest Freeway (Hwy 290) in Houston. Breeder shows like this one are the best places to obtain captive born reptiles. The Expo will be open to the public from 11 AM until 5 PM. GCTTS will have an educational booth at this very heavily attended event, and are in need of volunteers. If you can help man our booth or exhibit animals, let us know by August 1st. A good working knowledge of turtles and tortoises will be needed for this event. We are also looking for set-up help at 9 AM. Admission is free for our volunteers. More information on the conference, expo and sale: http://www.eths.org/html/expo2005.htm Foster Help Needed!Adult GCTTS members that are experienced turtle keepers and want to provide much needed help to turtles and tortoises can volunteer to help with our rehabilitation program. We always need help housing rehabs after they have been stabilized. These animals need a period of TLC, good conditions, and monitoring. Note that these turtles will need to be kept outdoors and isolated from any others you might have. GCTTS Joins Coalition to Help Save Ridley Sea TurtlesBob Smither - GCTTS member The Gulf Coast Turtle and Tortoise Society has joined a coalition with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project (STRP) and its Texas Office (Help Endangered Animals, Ridley Turtles; HEART) to help the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Since the year 2000 there has been a South Texas Closure designed to keep shrimpers out of a zone from Corpus Christi to the Mexican border that extends five nautical miles into the sea. The Closure runs from December 1 to the middle of July. After the Closure ends, shrimpers from Texas and other states enter the protected zone, putting Kemp's ridleys, greens, and other sea turtles at great risk. Unfortunately, many uninformed shrimpers continue to break the law and either do not use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) or simply tie them shut with monofiliment line. Historically there has been an increase each year in turtle strandings shortly after the Closure ends in July The National Academy of Sciences concluded that shrimp trawling kills more sea turtles than all other human activities combined. Because of non-compliance, federal laws requiring the use of TEDs in shrimp nets have not stopped the needless drowning of endangered sea turtles along the Texas coast. There continues to be high stranding counts of Kemp's ridleys and other sea turtle species during the shrimping season along the Texas coast. More adult Kemp's ridley sea turtles wash up dead at Padre Island than anywhere else in the world. About half are pregnant females coming to nest. Nearly half of all dead adult Kemp's ridley sea turtles found stranded in the United States during the last five years were found at Padre Island. Because of the efforts of conservationists and the US and Mexican governments Kemp's ridleys at their prime nesting beach at Rancho Nuevo, Mexico have had their nests protected for several years. As a direct result of this effort, and the Headstart program championed by HEART, for the first time in many years there are nesting ridley turtles on Texas beaches. Kemp's ridleys have been imprinted at the Padre Island National Seashore (PINS) for more than 20 years. This effort is finally beginning to pay off with the number of nests along the Texas coast increasing. So far in 2005 there have been 5 nests reported at the PINS. In 2004 there were 42 nests of ridleys along the Texas coast. Enforcement of the TED law is difficult, and the agencies responsible are understaffed. The establishment of a year round clearly marked "do not fish here" zone will make it easier to spot shrimp boats that are violating the law. The GCTTS, STRP, HEART, and other concerned organizations are asking the state of Texas to extend the current Closure outwards to a nine mile limit and to make it effective year round. After Board approval, GCTTS member Bob Smither recently sent the following to Carole Allen of STRP and HEART: "The Gulf Coast Turtle and Tortoise Society is proud to join the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and Help Endangered Animals - Ridly Turtles in supporting a permanent year round protected area of a minimum of nine nautical miles with no shrimp fishing allowed along the Texas coast from the Corpus Christi Fish Pass south to the Mexican border to protect the Kemp's ridley and all sea turtles and other marine organisms." Carole replied: "Thank you, Bob, and the GCTTS board. It's good to hear from you again in the turtle world. Please thank everyone for me. The GCTTS is a great, strong voice of support. Carole" I encourage you to visit the STRP site at: http://www.seaturtles.org/actionalertdetails.cfm?actionAlertID=87 and the HEART site at: http://www.ridleyturtles.org/ to learn what YOU can do to help the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. Texas A&M has a ridley tagging project - to learn more visit: http://www.tamug.edu/seaturtle/index.htm It is hoped that an extended Closure will help protect this most ancient and endangered inhabitant of the sea. Update on the Texas Diamondback TerrapinAnita Peddicord - GCTTS member Recently one of GCTTS members attended a meeting concerning the Texas Diamondback Terrapin Thursday the 5th of May held at Armand Bayou Nature Center. Here is a brief report: USF&W (US Fish & Wildlife) and TP&W (Texas Parks & Wildlife) and other interested groups were there including a Dr. Wood who came all the way from New Jersey. About 16 people were in attendance. Discussion was on what should be done to determine if this Terrapin needs some kind of protection by law. Things discussed were:
One interesting item briefly mentioned was that the sexes can be determined from the carapaces of dead terrapins. Where the fissures in the carapace meet, males have closed fontanels near the spine and females of the same size have open fontanels. This is due to the fact that the females grow larger than males. So, males a certain size are no longer growing and the females of the same size are still growing. I assume this is probably true of other turtle species where the female is the larger of the sexes. Basically, I gathered from this meeting that more studies are going to have to be done before any protection of terrapins from trap by catch may be done or before they are listed as a species of interest or as threatened and therefore protected by state law. It seems that if any decision is made to give them legal protection, that is still some years off. This is the conclusion I came to at the close of the meeting. It was however, nice to see that so many different groups were concerned about the terrapin. If you are not a GCTTS Member, please join us. See: http://www.gctts.org/membership_application.pdf or ask about membership at info@gctts.org or the hotline (281-443-3383). |