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Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Counting the Turtles
Courtesy photo from Jonathan Hakim
These Western Painted Turtles are commonly seen near bodies of water in Columbia County.
Nonprofit kicks off regional turtle survey Originally published in The Chronicle Vol. 140 April 27, 2022 ZOE GOTTLIEB chronicle2@countrymedia.net
“Turtles are amazing creatures,” said Jonathan Hakim, turtle surveyor and co-founder of nonprofit Wild Columbia County. “They’re the only reptile in our area that spends a significant portion of its time in the water, and they’re one of the neatest-looking animals around.” Columbia County Reptiles and Amphibians is a large-scale project led by Hakim and Wild Columbia County co-founder Matt D’Agrosa to document reptile and amphibian species, or “herps” across the region. The pair, in partnership with Scappoose Bay Watershed Council and Oregon Native Turtle Working Group, invites the public to join them on their turtle scouting expeditions, by land or by kayak, this spring and summer. Registration for these events are free. Volunteers will commit to visiting a potential turtle locality for 30 minutes on three different occasions during ideal conditions (between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. when it is 65 to 75 degrees air temperature), according to the Wild Columbia County website. Waterways included in the search are Nehalem River, Rock Creek, Sauvie Island, Scappoose Bay, Deer
Island, Sandy Island, Crims Island, Wallace Island, Clatskanie River, and the sloughs of Westport. The second mandatory training session for surveyors took place Saturday, April 23, at Trojan Park in Rainier. The turtle surveys will run from April to September.
lic databases, people started telling me Columbia County doesn’t have any records,” Hakim explained, of the motivation for launching the project. In the following oneon-one interview with The Chronicle, Hakim explains the purpose and goals of the turtle survey.
Background
The Chronicle: Why survey turtles? In other words, what is their importance to Columbia County’s ecosystem?
Hakim, from St. Helens, and D’Agrosa, from Scappoose, first became interested in the world of reptiles and amphibians growing up together as children. Together, Hakim and D’Agrosa went on expeditions through the woods of Warren to observe the biodiversity around them. Later, new developments in technology presented a new way for the two to catalog their observations. “Then there was a database that we started putting our finds (in), taking pictures that would record everything,” D’Agrosa said. “As we started entering (our findings) into these pub-
Hakim: Because they move about in the water column, they (turtles) play an important role in the food chain and nutrient cycles - they eat up insects and scavenge detritus from the bottom of ponds, which cleanses the water, and then distribute it as manure in both land and water, which spurs plant growth. Studies have shown that when turtles live in a wetland, the water becomes cleaner while plants on both land and water become more nutrient-rich. Unfortunately, turtle
populations have not been healthy in Columbia County for a long time. In many parts of the county, their wetlands were drained or made impossible to inhabit. In other spots, their babies got eaten by invasive species like bullfrogs or they couldn’t dig nests anymore because of invasive plants onshore. We’re surveying turtles because we’re trying to find out where they’ve been able to hang on the best. The Chronicle: What kinds of turtles are native to Columbia County? Hakim: We have two native turtle species - the Western Pond Turtle and the Western Painted Turtle. The painted turtle is recognizable by its yellow-striped head and often has a red bottom to its shell. It is most common in sloughs and ponds close to the Columbia River. The pond turtle is a much drabber species, mostly brown. It used to live close to the river like the painted turtle and also inland through
the creeks and rivers in the interior county. However, the pond turtle is almost never seen in our county anymore. The Chronicle: How long will the survey take, and what will you do with it? Hakim: We’re planning to run surveys from April through September. If we find turtles on any property, the first thing we do is immediately share the information with the landowner. People are often excited to find out what turtles they have (if they even knew they had turtles) and often ask what they can do to ensure that the turtles can continue to lay their eggs and have babies that will survive. We’re also sharing the information with the Oregon Native Turtle Working Group, and when the project is over, we’re going to publish a report that shows how well both species of turtle are doing in Columbia County. The Chronicle: Please explain the training involved in the surveying.
Hakim: The training is simple - we help people learn how to look at a site and figure out where the turtles will be, how to approach the turtles and get pictures without spooking them, and how to record the data on iNaturalist. The actual surveys begin whenever the weather warms up to 6575 degrees. Each volunteer picks out their own place to survey, and then they visit the site three times on dates of their own choosing, just so long as the temperature is in the correct range. iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature, according to iNaturalist.org. 94,676,605 observations of 344,034 species have been recorded on iNaturalist to date. See wildcolumbia.org for more information on the Columbia County Reptiles and Amphibians project. To become a volunteer, email to wildcolumbia112@gmail. com.
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