Assessment of Blanding’s Turtle, Emydoidea blandingii, Overwintering Sites in St. Lawrence County, NY (2020)

When designing conservation efforts, it is important to understand and assess all habitats being used by the species. This project’s purpose is to evaluate overwintering sites of the threatened Blanding’s Turtle, Emydoidea blandingii, at two locations in Northern New York. One site is a large emergent freshwater marsh; the other is peat-land with limited water flow. It was hypothesized that the turtles would select for similar characteristics when choosing overwintering sites; any differences detected could be attributed to differences in wetland type. The turtles had been tagged by researchers in previous summers. During February 2020, tagged turtles were tracked three times. Once they were located, we took measurements of ice thickness, water depth, and temperature. Of these measures, only water depth was significantly different between the two sites (the marsh site was deeper). We detected no under-ice movement by turtles during this period.