Designing a Plan to Protect Box Turtles
Box turtles have unlucky seen better days in the wild as well human doings pose a danger to box turtle survival. Consequently, presenting a whole and diverse habitat as close together as possible, without superseding roads, lawns, or houses would aid protect existing turtle colonies from human beings, and their machines. Careful, considerate stewardship can guarantee or enhance that future.
Nonetheless, Dodd (2001) proposes that, to enhance turtle habitat, consider at every turn, what a box turtle needs. If box turtles could ask, what would they ask for? In brief, box turtles require a sunny clearing with numerous minor fruiting plants, few grasses, and no trees for them to bask and reproduce. Additionally, wet soils offer rest on hot days, a variety of foods, and water for the box turtles. Turtle diets differ broadly. Some are strict herbivores, others are herbivorous as adults then carnivorous as juveniles, some are entirely carnivorous, and others are strictly omnivorous. Therefore, since we still do not know precisely what a box turtle needs to stay healthy, it is best to provide it a lot of diverse things. Thus, more probable to cover all essential vitamins, minerals, proteins, and so on in the box turtle food (2001).
Conferring to Ernst, Lovich and Barbour (2004), box turtles tend to thrive best when left alone. However, there are some circumstances when human beings can help them. For instance, when box turtles start nesting in their own back yard, human being can protect the turtle eggs from predators like raccoons with a dome of chicken wire. Besides, one can help protect box turtles by dispersing information. People need to know that they can unintentionally kill a box turtle as easily as picking it up, showing it to their camping buddies; and setting it down in a different place than they found it (2004).
The significance of protecting box turtles, in line with Klemens (2006) is that, turtles play many key roles on the environmental stage. Meanwhile, as consumers of plants and other animals they are links to the energetic webs in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and as prey of other animals (as eggs, juveniles, and adults), they are bases of energy to other links in the food web. Therefore, protecting turtle habitat will unquestionably help to protect ecosystems and other forms of life, animals, and plants. The loss of any turtle species, each of which represents over 200 million years of evolution, importunity, and hereditary information, would create an emptiness that can never be filled by other species. Also, preserving box turtle populations in the wild is essential for the health and functioning of Long Island’s natural environment (2006). Klemens further states that, various forms of art have used turtles as their theme since box turtles provide ethnic, artistic, and spiritual encouragement values (2006).
References
Dodd, C.K. (2001). North American Box Turtles. A Natural History. Norman, Okla. University of Oklahoma Press.
Ernst, C.H., Lovich, J.E., and Barbour R.W. (2004). Turtles of the United States and Canada.,Conservation of Box Turtles. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press.
Klemens, M.W. (2006). Turtle Conservation. Help Save Box Turtles. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press