On June 29th, we all heard how 150 or more diamondback terrapins crawled out of Jamaica Bay, and onto the tarmac of JFK Airport, on their way to their nesting sites.
I spoke with Dr. Paul Raiti, my herpetologist veterinarian about this. We were struck by two thoughts: 1. Given that this is a threatened species, it was heartening to know that there were still this many in Jamaica Bay of all places. 2. What will happen around 60 days from June 29th, or the last week of August, when the 1500 or so eggs from the 150 mothers hatch? Presumably they would start crawling back across the tarmac. No one wants that.
We recommend that the nest locations be identified, then each enclosed with chicken wire. During that last week of August, they should be checked every eight hours. This task could be done by camps, schools, conservancies, parks departments, working with JFK personnel.
Some of the hatchlings would then be deployed to help reintroduce the species into areas along the eastern seaboard. We think we owe them that much.
Sun Aug 07, 2011 at 8:49 AM PT: Update: The babies -- these particular baby terrapins -- appear safe enough. The overall Jamaica Bay population, well that's another story:
From Prof. Russell Burke of Hofstra:
There are marshes on both sides of the runway, so hatchlings could walk straight into a marsh from their nests, without needing to cross the runway. The famous mother terrapins were not taking the most direct routes.
The large numbers of terrapins at JFK these days indicates that predation by raccoons and bird predation is not a really big problem. The JFK wildlife folks say there are few raccoons there. But it is an interesting question, because we have seen very high predation rates at my study site on nearby Ruler’s Bar. That’s one of the things we’ll be looking at next year.
Right now it looks like the JFK terrapin population is large and healthy. It will take a couple of years of work for us to confirm that, and to understand why it is doing so much better than other Jamaica bay populations.
Dr. Russell Burke
Department of Biology
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549
516-463-5521
biorlb@hofstra.edu
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.
A Leopold