by Cecily Ross
Naturalist Don Scallen’s love affair with turtles began when he was a child in Georgetown, Ontario, exploring the woods around nearby Silver Creek, a tributary of the Credit River.
“It was just like a mini-dinosaur and I was hooked,” he recalls his first encounter with a hatchling snapping turtle he found burrowed in the muddy stream.
On June 20, Scallen will share his passion for Ontario’s eight native turtle species with a talk at the Station on the Green, an event put on by the Clearview Sustainability Network’s biodiversity group.
Scallen is on a mission to bring attention to the plight of this much loved reptile. All of the province’s eight turtle species are at risk to varying degrees—from the endangered spotted turtle and spiny soft-shelled turtle, to the threatened Blandings turtle and the common painted turtle. These animals, particularly the newly hatched and unhatched, are at the mercy of raccoons and otters and even large birds, says Scallen.
“Whenever they are on land they’re at risk,” he says.
But the greatest contributor to their declining numbers is habitat loss, in particular that caused by the province’s network of highways which Scallen calls “ribbons of death.”
“We face a dilemma because you can’t put turtle barriers on every road in the province,” said Scallen. Turtles travel many kilometres in a lifetime and because there are roads every 1.5 kilometres in Ontario, they are obliged to cross them to reach their nesting grounds. As well, many of the marshes, swamps, fens and bogs where turtles live have been drained or filled. Fewer than one in 100 turtle eggs laid will hatch and reach maturity, which takes 15-20 years. If they do make it to adulthood, some species can live to be 100 years old. To help ensure the survival of as many as possible, Scallen has joined the growing efforts to raise awareness about the turtles’ plight. Each year he takes part in the Ontario Turtle Tally organized by the Toronto Zoo, counting the creatures from his kayak on the Grand River and other bodies of water.
Asked why turtles are important, Scallen takes exception to the idea that a species should have some benefit to humans to be valued. His reverence for them and for all of the natural world is philosophical.
“Turtles are wondrous creatures that have been around for thousands of years. They have a right to be here,” he says. “The natural world has always been a solace and a source of inspiration to me.”
The retired school teacher has spent his career passing on his enthusiasm to his students and to the rest of us through his regular columns in In The Hills Magazine and articles in On Nature magazine, writing about everything from flying squirrels to lady bugs to salamanders and owls. Scallen’s book, Nature Where We Live: Activities to Engage Your Inner Scientist from Pond Dipping to Animal Tracking will be on sale at the June 20 event and one lucky nature lover will go home with a copy as a door prize.
Admission is pay-what-you-can at the door. All proceeds will go to turtle conservation efforts in the province. The event begins at 7 p.m.
Cecily Ross is a member of the Clearview Sustainability Network’s biodiversity working group.