Speaking of Wildlife

All about Oliver,
the Blanding’s Turtle!

by Jamie Proctor 

Welcome to the twenty-fifth column introducing the residents of Speaking of Wildlife: Ontario animals that can’t be released back into the wilderness due to permanent injuries or over-habituation to humans. Up to bat today is Oliver, our Blanding’s Turtle – who is most certainly not bland. Once again common names are not to be trusted.  

The Blanding’s Turtle (named for the extremely late Dr. William Blanding, who left this mortal coil in 1857) is – unsurprisingly, like so many other freshwater dwellers in Ontario – heavily based around the Great Lakes and environs, and their Canadian range can be more or less bifurcated into one population stretching from there to the St. Lawrence and a separate population in Nova Scotia.  

A turtle of respectably middle-class size and appetite, it comes a bit under or over twenty centimeters in length (less than a foot, but not by a mile) and will eat anything from frogs to bugs to berries to plant matter. In the summer they love a nice wetland environment with plenty of vegetative cover; for the winter they prefer to bed down in slightly faster-moving or unfrozen water so as to get the best mileage from the old turtle trick of extracting waterborne oxygen through their cloaca.

They’re also quite willing to make multi-kilometre overland trips, particularly to reproduce, which, although laudably industrious, does put them in the crosshairs of the many roadways that have so thoroughly fragmented their habitat.  

As to personal features, these include a very distinctive and beautifully vivid yellow chin and throat that is unique among Ontario turtles (there is an Anishnaabe story about ‘the turtle with the sun under its chin’: if you want to thank someone for returning the sun to the sky, thank a Blanding’s Turtle); a stately and smooth high-domed carapace; a hinged plastron that lets them shut up their shells almost as tightly as a box turtle (another title is theirs: the ‘semi-box turtle’); and (in my own opinion) a warm, friendly and good-natured expression that always seems to be ready to smile.

This cheerful face stands in somewhat dismaying contrast to the species’ status in the wild: Blanding’s Turtles suffer the classic turtle problem of possessing a life history based around high mortality among the young plus a slow growth to maturity (Blanding’s Turtles take potentially two decades to reproductive age, with an adult lifespan extending into and potentially over their eighties) suddenly meeting a tremendous vulnerability to now-omnipresent vehicular traffic – and this is to say nothing of illegal pet collection (don’t try to turn wild animals into pets, please).  

As of 2016, both Canadian populations of Blanding’s Turtles are considered Endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada; the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence population is categorized as Threatened by the Ontario government; and the Nova Scotia population is Endangered under the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act. 

Oliver, our Blanding’s Turtle-In-Residence, has survived a direct car incident but came to us through an indirect one: her mother was struck by a car shortly after laying her eggs, which were recovered and hatched in captivity, which – although a much friendlier, less-lethal environment for a hatchling turtle than the wild – did not leave her in a state where she had developed the necessary skills to readily survive on her own.  

Instead, she has mastered the ability to snipe floating turtle pellets from her favourite sunning spot; adapted to propping herself on her water filter to enjoy the gentle massaging hum of its impeller; and learned to splash in great excitement when someone sprinkles in a new meal for her.  She also has (over the course of years) developed a small and clean but perfectly through-and-through hole at the very anterior rim of her plastron – not considered medically problematic – which gives off the general affect of a piercing. 

Oliver has long been among the most excited and happy of our turtles to see me within very specific parameters, that is to say, when I am carrying food, she will churn the water like a speedboat. Otherwise, she regards me with gentle ambivalence. This is possibly from the times where I’ve helped place her in a bin of warm water and antibiotics to clean her plastron ‘piercing,’ but it’s possible I am overstating my emotional impact on her out of guilt. She might simply more concerned with the finer things in life, like getting as much wattage out of her lamps and as much food into her stomach as turtle-ly possible.

Speaking of Wildlife is a local non-profit whose mandate is to provide permanent sanctuary to non-releasable Ontario wildlife, and to deliver lasting educational experiences that foster appreciation and respect. For lots more information and to book an educational tour, check out the Speaking of Wildlife website or contact Krystal at 705-327-9450.