Turtles are in trouble in Texas. Here’s how you can help them

Texas’ turtles are shell-shocked.

By the thousands, they’re grabbed up from quiet, rural ponds and rivers and carted off to be sold as pets, or shipped overseas as food.

Like the armadillo, they often meet their end on the highway, sometimes at their former nesting grounds. Unlike the armadillo, nobody sings about them.

Finally, Texas’ turtles will be safeguarded next week, if the state wildlife board approves a proposal to ban commercial turtle trapping for resale.

“This is a new dawn for turtles in Texas,” said Rick Hudson, a Fort Worth Zoo conservation biologist and co-founder of the international Turtle Survival Alliance conservation group meeting downtown this week.

“There’s a Texas-sized hole in the law on turtles,” he said between sessions as more than 100 biologists and conservationists from around the world gathered for four days of turtle talk.

Texas law already prohibits catching several scarce species of turtles for resale, along with any turtle when it’s in a public lake or river, biologist Meredith Longoria of Texas Parks and Wildlife explained. (Under state law, all fish and game in public lakes and rivers belongs to the people of Texas.)

But when game wardens caught someone selling or transporting the common snapping or softshell turtles or “sliders,” they had to prove the turtles were caught in public water.

“It caused confusion,” Longoria said.

“There is a need to protect turtles here from being overharvested.”

Parks & Wildlife Commission Chairman Ralph Duggins, a Fort Worth lawyer, said even Texas’ most common turtles are suffering from “overexploitation.”

“It’s not about telling a private landowner you can’t reduce the turtles in your pond,” he said. (Turtle farms aren’t affected either, Longoria said.)

“It’s about these harvests that have a more significant impact,” Duggins said. “ … We need to make sure we don’t find these turtles in a dire situation.”

Texas’ turtles were a frequent topic at the turtle biologists’ meeting, which included a field trip from the Hilton Fort Worth to the Clear Fork of the Trinity River beneath the West Lancaster Avenue bridge.

“This is the largest collection of turtle nerds in the world,” Hudson said with a grin.

Paschal High School biology teacher Andrew Brinker talked about his students’ work on the Trinity River Turtle Study, a three-year project.

“Turtles get eaten,” he said: “Or they’re pets. What people don’t understand is that turtles keep the water clear. They clear out the algae.”

They’re great for school lessons because they’re docile, he said: “Everybody likes turtles. They’re safe. Nobody ever gets hurt bad by a turtle.”

Viviana Ricardez of Arlington-based Texas Turtles described turtles as a “cleanup crew” for ponds and rivers.

When you see one crossing the road, it’s probably a female going to her nest, Ricardez said. If it’s a new road, it crossed her regular path.

“Help her get where she’s going,” Ricardez said.

The Fort Worth Zoo helped found the turtle conservation group in 2001, and Hudson helped lead a rescue of 7,500 turtles from the illicit turtle trade.

Before Texas protected the scarcer species in 2007, an average of 70,000 turtles a year were shipped worldwide out of DFW Airport alone, according to Star-Telegram archives.

“People were just coming to Texas and vacuuming up turtles,” he said.

The biologists will dine Wednesday at the zoo’s new African Savanna exhibit and tour the herpetarium, officially named the Museum of Living Art (MOLA).

Next week: Austin.

This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Turtles are in trouble in Texas. Here’s how you can help them."