NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1463221
April 2022 • Nebraskaland 23 picking them up. Lindvall said there have been several instances of such suspicious activity by visitors to the refuge. The turtles are especially sought as pets overseas and are sold for hundreds of dollars, Lang said. While Lang worries that added attention could draw unlawful collectors to the Sandhills, he knows the turtles' story needs to be told in order to protect them into the future. "It cuts both ways," Lang said. "If you don't make it known that it's important, you could lose aspects of the region that are important to the turtles." Return to the Refuge When coronavirus restrictions sidelined plans for Lang to return to India to study gharial crocodiles last spring, he decided it was time to revisit the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. He got clearance from the refuge, loaded the hoop traps — he'd been paying storage for them since the Blanding's project ended in 2003 — and headed south on Easter weekend. "I kept the traps because I always dreamed about coming back here," he said, relating his goal to revisit turtles he had handled in the past. To mark the turtles, the researchers use an alphabetic code that relates to scales on the outer edge of the carapace, the top part of the shell. Holes are drilled in specifi c locations to give each turtle a unique identifi er. Lang is not the only one who has marked Blanding's turtles in the Sandhills. In 1991, prior to Lang's involvement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Bruce Bury marked dozens of them. Lang set up camp, and the traps were set at lakes and marshes throughout the refuge just as they were in the early 2000s. "The main thing I was trying to do is get some idea of the age distribution of the turtles," he said. "The hope was that we would recover the turtles that we marked and that were marked in 1991. And we did that." Lang and volunteers captured 285 Blanding's turtles, and he was ecstatic to fi nd 30 turtles with holes that he had drilled about two decades ago, and more than 10 that Bury had marked three decades ago. "These adults are really homebodies, it looks like," Lang said, while relating a story about capturing a 42-year-old turtle in the exact same place near Hackberry Lake that he did 20 years ago. "She's still there. Really, what we have are these resident populations that seem to be spread all over the refuge." He said evidence is showing that Blanding's turtles are not evenly dispersed throughout the refuge. "We get turtles that are 3 years old, which are almost the smallest turtles I've ever seen here, all the way to the full adults that are 40 years old, and they're all in the same trap," Lang measures a turtle before returning it to its habitat. The data is not only presently valuable, but also may be compared by researchers who capture the turtle in coming decades.