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What Is “Turtles In the Classroom”?
What Is “Turtles In the Classroom”?
As a part of our environmental science curriculum, SPFHS will be participating in a program to help raise hatchling Wood Turtles. These hatchlings are collected from Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. These baby turtles face numerous challenges and likely would have struggled to survive on their own in the wild, so we are helping to give them a head-start before they are returned in June.
Turtles in the Classroom helps to connect students with their environment and serves as a gateway stewardship experience for students. Through the program, students learn to see connections between human impacts (including their own) and the natural world. It is an opportunity to help conserve an endangered species and protect biodiversity in our own backyards.
The hatchlings are hosted in our 20 gallon aquarium, complete with an underwater heater and filter and multiple basking platforms to help keep the young turtles comfortable. Over the course of the next few months, students develop a deep appreciation for the value of wildlife as they learn to take on the role of environmental stewards. The program culminates with a field trip to the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, where students return their turtles to a state-approved location. The funding for our Turtles in the Classroom program was provided by a generous grant from the EEF.
What Is A Wood Turtle?
What Is A Wood Turtle?
The wood turtle’s carapace, or upper shell, has a sculpted or grooved appearance, making it appear that their shells are carved from wood. Each season a new annulus, or ridge, is formed, giving each scute (a scale-like horny layer) a distinctive pyramid-shaped appearance. As the turtle ages, natural wear smoothes the surface of the shell. While the scutes of the carapace are brown, the plastron, or underneath shell, consists of yellow scutes with brown or black blotches on each outer edge. The legs and throat are reddish-orange.
Wood turtles once ranged widely across eastern landscapes characterized by meandering cobble-bottom streams and their surrounding fields and forests. Neither strictly aquatic or terrestrial -- they live both on land and in water -- the wood turtle is vulnerable to loss of both types of habitat.
Wood turtles are omnivorous and opportunistic. They are not picky eaters and will readily consume slugs, worms, tadpoles, insects, algae, wild fruits, leaves, grass, moss, and carrion. Once temperatures drop in autumn, the turtles retreat to rivers and large streams for hibernation. Dissolved oxygen is extracted from the water, allowing the turtle to remain submerged entirely until the arrival of spring.
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