Argentina Red-footed Tortoise Release
Fantastic News! Forty red-footed tortoises (Chelonoidis carbonarius) will soon be in the process of being reintroduced to the El Impenetrable Park in Argentina. These unique and giant species of redfoots were last seen in the wild 20 years ago. The Turtle Conservancy is proud to be a supporting organization to the Rewilding Argentina team. A special thank you to our board members, Martin Dieck and Rick Ridgeway, for their support to make this possible.
Southern Pacific Pond Turtle Conservation Program
The TC’s Southern Pacific Pond Turtle Conservation Program has been off to a great start this season. In past posts we've chronicled our search for Southern California’s only native freshwater turtle, Actinemys pallida, at two field sites. Past sightings have been sporadic and too few to confirm the presence of a population of resident Southern Pacific Pond Turtles which are notorious for evading human detection. This changed in May. Once we were permitted to employ hands-on techniques of capturing turtles, we immediately began finding healthy adults suggesting viable populations are present in these two very different locations.
Thacher School X Turtle Conservancy
Reptiles, More Than Ever, Face Extinction Risk
As we go to the press with The Tortoise, our 11th issue of our annual magazine, an important report came out in the New York Times on the plight of reptiles titled, "From Tiny Geckos to King Cobras, 20% of Reptiles Face Extinction Risk."
Ted Turner Saves Tortoises
This past month, the Turtle Conservancy Board of Directors and Staff were invited to participate in the release of 25 Bolson Tortoises back into their Pleistocene range. Joining 75 others that now range free on the Armendaris Ranch, these tortoises are part of a group of over 700 captive-bred Bolson Tortoises raised on Ted Turner's Armendaris and Ladder Ranches in New Mexico. Bolson tortoises were unknown to science until the remnant population in Mexico was discovered in 1959. Wild bolson tortoises have been absent from the continental U.S. for over 10,000 years, during the late Pleistocene Epoch…
AZA Recertification
The Turtle Conservancy is delighted to report that we have once again passed our AZA certification!
On April 20th, the Turtle Conservancy attended the AZA Accreditation Commission for our 5-year recertification hearing. This included an AZA accreditation committee of 13 directors, vets, and CEOs from around the country. Many were the heads of prestigious organizations like Monterey Bay Aquarium, WCS, OKC Zoo, and more and we were pleased to share that we passed our certification with a successful report.
Doing Our Small Part...
Five days before Vladimir Putin’s soldiers invaded Ukraine on Feb. 19, Kyiv native Elena and her three children boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles to visit her younger sister. What had been planned as Elena’s 36th birthday celebration and solo trip to Ojai turned quickly into a narrow escape for her and her three children that — in a lucky twist — landed them in a house on Eric Goode’s Turtle Conservancy in Ojai…
Think Globally. Act Locally.
The Turtle Conservancy takes great pride in the efforts it undertakes to restore the habitats of the network of preserves around the globe. We decided to focus some of these efforts to restore the habitat of our own backyard. On a sunny Saturday morning last month, the neighbors of the Turtle Conservancy in Ojai came together to plant young live oak trees on the 25-acre East End Preserve…
Thacher Course End-of-Term Recap
The winter school term has come to an end for our Thacher School students! This has been our most abundant year yet with 28 students enrolled in our Field Biology and Conservation courses which focus on field biology techniques and conservation through the lens of turtles. Our innovative students are currently working on various conservation projects which have research, design and engineering aspects to them. This is a wonderful opportunity for students, who are especially interested in future careers in the animal field, to get hands-on experience...
End of Year Appeal
Here's a quick reminder: there are just hours left to send in a tax-deductible year-end gift before the end of 2021!
A donation to the Turtle Conservancy is a donation to help protect this planet from:
With nearly 70,000 acres of grasslands, rainforests, and fynbos under our protection, you can help reverse the effects of climate change. These highly regenerative ecosystems act both as a carbon sink and a means to sequester carbon. Protecting land also prevents ever encroaching slash-and-burn agriculture and cattle farming. (Photo of Sandoval Reserve and Reforestation Area by Katala Foundation)
The wildlife rangers we support safeguard some of the most endangered tortoises on the planet. Our conservation center houses hundreds of turtles confiscated from smugglers around the world. (Photo of tortoise guardians on Geometric Tortoise Preserve)
Turtle Conservancy programs hatch hundreds of endangered turtles and tortoises every year, both in the wild and at our conservation center in California. This past year we released over 4,000 Diamondback Terrapins in New Jersey. Our captive breeding efforts currently encompass 19 of the top 50 most endangered turtles and tortoises.
Your gift is an investment in people and the planet. Every bit of your support will be matched by a generous donor.
Please donate by midnight tonight and make 2021 a success for turtles!
Giving Tuesday 2021
The Turtle Conservancy protects over 65,000 acres of wild land—safeguarding not only the turtles and tortoises but also a whole host of plants and animals that call these places home. Take a look at our conservation projects below to learn about what your donations will support on this #GivingTuesday!
TC Welcomes New Turtles
The TC has welcomed some very unique Australian turtles to our living collection. Last week we received a pair of Mary River Turtles from Oklahoma City Zoo. This endangered species is the only member of its genus and is found—as the name suggests—exclusively in the Mary River of South East Queensland...
TC Fall Board Meeting
In late October, the Turtle Conservancy had the pleasure of holding our first (mostly) in-person board meeting in nearly two years. The three day gathering at our center in Ojai, CA was a much-anticipated chance for us to come together and update board members on our ongoing programs and discuss the future of the TC...
Conceptual Art at UN Climate Conference in Glasgow
Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and our planet as we know it. Turtles and tortoises are a perfect bellwether for the crisis as many aspects of their biology are directly influenced by their environment. Already, their populations are being affected, because their sex is determined by temperatures during egg incubation. If all hatchlings develop into females, reproduction will eventually cease to occur. Changing weather patterns are also accelerating loss of suitable habitat for many species to survive. The combined pressure of these changes to the environment could be catastrophic for turtles and tortoise species, of which more than half are threatened with extinction.
Save The Okavango
The Okavango River Basin is in danger. Permits have been granted to a Canadian fossil fuel company, ReconAfrica, which plans to build new oil and gas fields in the Okavango wilderness region of Namibia and Botswana. The license permits drilling and potentially fracking over a 13,200-square-mile area that includes land adjacent to protected areas in Namibia’s Kavango regions and the Okavango Delta (the world's largest inland delta) in Botswana...
October Outreach
AUTRE Magazine: Biodiversity Issue
With a focus on the plight of endangered species, AUTRE Magazine dedicated a unique cover story to the Turtle Conservancy in where filmmaker (director of Tiger King) and former nightlife impresario, Eric Goode, has created a headquarters for saving the rarest and most threatened turtles and tortoises on Earth...
Field Biology and Conservation Through The Lens of Turtles
School is back in session and once again we have teamed up with our neighbors, The Thacher School, by incorporating turtle conservation into several class curriculums. This year the Field Biology and Conservation course has expanded to two separate sections plus an advanced class. For the duration of the school year, each student will be paired up with one of our giant tortoise ambassadors where they will be conducting weekly behavioral observations and health checks!
Turtle Smuggler Sentenced
In December of 2019 we shared the news of a turtle trafficking network that had been uncovered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Postal Service. The two year long investigation documented a plan to illegally export over 769 native North American turtles (of many protected species) to China for the international pet trade. The investigation led to the arrest of a Chinese national and halted this particular operation. Nearly three years after his arrest, the man who pleaded guilty to purchasing and planning to export these turtles was finally sentenced earlier this month…