Volunteers at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute are celebrating their most recent discovery: a new population of endangered Blanding's turtles in south western Nova Scotia near Kejimkujik National Park.
The group, along with numerous conservationists, have been monitoring the area's turtle populations since the 1980's. The latest discovery represents the fourth known population of Blanding's turtle in Nova Scotia.
It may include anywhere between 100 and 200 full gown turtles.
Tom Herman is on the institute's board of directors and has co-chaired a Blanding's turtle recovery team since the early 1990s. He calls this newest discovery of turtles, which are geographically separated from any known others, "extraordinary."
The knowledge of a fourth population first came to the institutes attention after a local fisherman reported sightings of Blanding's turtles last autumn
MTRI volunteers began searching the waterways this spring, using radio transmitters and GPS technology, to identify and monitor full grown Blanding's turtles.
Herman credits MTRI volunteers like Harold and Diane Clapp, who discovered nearly all of the Blanding's turtles in the newly established population. "It's painstakingly slow work, it's an acquired taste, but we've benefited from having a huge body of volunteers," he says.