Walking just up the road from his Airport Way home Sunday, May 25, John Harding doesn't have to commute far to his evening job monitoring Revelstoke's turtles.
Sporting a reflective vest and chaining down the custom "Slow down: Turtle X'ing" sign his wife made 香蕉视频直播� the original was unfortunately stolen last year 香蕉视频直播� he spends 30 minutes patrolling Red Devil Hill near the Revelstoke Airport, counting the shells along the shoulder.
This Sunday evening is particularly exciting, with a high of 19 western painted turtles that Harding hasn't matched in his past two years doing this. As the lead for Turtle Conservation Revelstoke (TCR), he has an average count this year of a daily dozen.
"Fifteen in a day is amazing," Harding said, let alone 19.
Western painted turtles, federally listed as "special concern" in their Rockies range, live 30 to 40 years, and are each distinguished by a unique pattern on their shell and red underside. This time of year, they move inland to lay anywhere between a half-dozen and two dozen eggs. For turtles, they hike quite the distance up Red Devil Hill, carrying water from the Columbia River marshland to help dig out a nest.
Their nesting season, spanning from mid-May to as late as July, has only grown more fruitful since 2023. Harding reported 144 individual turtles that first year of monitoring, followed by 204 in 2024.
Back in the early 2000s, Revelstoke's Francis Maltby was the first to do this conservation work in town. BC Hydro biologists have been monitoring turtles in the area since 2008, Harding said, and groups such as the Okanagan Nation Alliance have helped create population inventories around Revelstoke at Airport Marsh, Williamson Lake, Montana Slough and Cartier Bay.
Picking up the torch two decades after Maltby, Harding first consulted turtle conservation sites at Elizabeth Lake in Cranbrook to develop best practices. Until this year, he was mostly running the show alone.
"We needed to get more volunteers involved so we could get more community awareness," Harding said.
Now backed by a small team of volunteer helpers, including Wildsight Revelstoke's summer outreach and education coordinator Sadie Popoff, TCR has found more capacity to perform tasks such as a dozen vegetation removals this spring, helping turtles better navigate their way up the forested Red Devil Hill.
"It could be that vegetation removal helps, or it could just be a better year," Harding said for the success of this season, noting weather conditions also play a role.
"The fact that John's never even seen 19 turtles before seeing that (this year), and sharing that with people," is promising, Popoff said. "Everyone in town loves the outdoors, so I think that's another way to connect with (turtle conservation)."
Popoff, bringing a wildlife rehabilitation and veterinary background from the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation, emphasized that "one of the main things you've got to be careful of is managing (turtles') stress." As with many animals, turtles can experience escalated health ramifications due to the constant presence of humans 香蕉视频直播� something she said is very important to monitor.
Making as little contact with the turtles as possible, "we just try to let them do their thing, monitor them, then let them cross the road again," Popoff described.
Turtle activity peaks from 4 p.m. to midnight, and especially around 8 p.m., when Harding's team ventures out to check numbers. Sometimes, they do intervene for the better. In the first week of May, Harding saved a hatchling that couldn't dig itself out, and relocated it to the marsh.
"We were pretty much doing it a favour," he said.
TCR also plays a role dealing with pests. Unlike other parts of B.C., the biggest predators for turtles here are egg-eating ravens, which routinely show up for breakfast at 4 a.m. Using a half-dozen motion-activated wildlife cameras in 2024, Harding recorded a predation rate of 70 to 80 per cent of eggs. Compared with academic literature, he said this rate is below average.
Still, he's doubled his cameras this season to 13, to keep closer eyes on ravenous ravens. Based on where the cameras show turtle eggs snatched most from underground, Harding positions several 12-by-18-inch nest boxes with small exit holes on top to give hatchlings respite. Last year, these boxes helped protect eight nests, and by May 25 this year, he'd already identified seven nests inside them. Harding also wants to get cameras inside the boxes, to monitor how long it takes hatchlings to break out of their eggs.
Along with keeping nests secure from ravens, TCR is focused on minimizing road mortality. In 2024, Harding recorded seven turtles killed by motor vehicles.
"I'm a bit surprised they get nailed on the road," he said, given that the Red Devil Hill area is a designated 30-kilometre zone along Airport Way during nesting season.
So far this year, two turtles are known to have been hit, including one a couple of kilometres south of Revelstoke Airport killed in a 60-kilometre zone during broad daylight on Saturday, June 7, by a motorist who neither slowed down nor adjusted their position to avoid the turtle. Harding is working to install turtle signage there, too, and advises any motorist who encounters a turtle to safely pull over and get out to escort it to safety. If the turtle doesn't move, Harding said it's OK to either slide it off the road, or gently carry it 香蕉视频直播� in which case it may drop its water. Always move the turtle to the side of the road it's moving or facing toward.
To TCR's disappointment, B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation and Transit won't allow flashers to be installed along the road to help motorists steer clear of turtles at night, because they're reserved for humans, not animals. Instead, Harding said the ministry wants to build a turtle tunnel farther down Airport Way, even though he doubts turtles would consistently use it and find their way back there.
"I think the objective should be watch for the turtles," he concluded, emphasizing the need for more monitoring of nest success, and the power citizen science can contribute. "What we're seeing in the last two to three years is a lot better than what we've seen in the last 15 years."
Going forward, especially to better understand Revelstoke's younger western painted turtles, Popoff said more years of data are also essential.
"The hatchlings do stay underground all winter, so that's pretty cool."
She encourages anyone who encounters a turtle in town to email r, and also share their finding on iNaturalist. Those interested in joining TCR's volunteer turtle watch can sign up next winter.
"We'll always take more people, for sure," said Popoff, who's currently putting together a short film spotlighting TCR's work. "The difference that one person can make is huge, so the difference that an entire team can make could be really amazing."
