Box Turtles' Slow Race for Survival

CHARLES CITY, Va. -- The dead walk among us.

Actually, they crawl.

They are box turtles -- gentle, softball-size animals that can live past 100.

But these land-dwelling reptiles that some Virginians have kept as pets are dying out as development chews up their forests and cars crush them on the roads.

The eastern box turtle is still found across Virginia, particularly during a summer rain, which gets them moving in search of earthworms, insects and other food.

Because they live so long, a few can give the impression that their population is healthy, but this group no longer produces young that survive.

"We call them populations of the living dead," said Joseph C. Mitchell, a University of Richmond biologist. Raccoons dig up and eat the turtles' eggs and, along with other predators, kill young turtles.

The answer to the survival of the species may lie in an experiment at Virginia Commonwealth University's wooded Charles City County tract called the Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences. "We're sweating to the turtles," said J.D. Kleopfer as he trudged through the Rice Center forest on a recent steamy morning.

Kleopfer, a reptile expert for the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, held a tracking device before him as he zigged and zagged through the woods. A series of ever-sharper beeps told him he was closing in on a box turtle that had a watch-size transmitter glued to its back.

As part of a study that began in May, Kleopfer was tracking box turtles to learn when and where they travel.

When a forest is about to be bulldozed, well-meaning people sometimes catch box turtles and put them in another woods miles away, but experts don't think that saves them. The displaced animals become homing turtles, taking off for their former home. They usually end up dead on the highway or picked up by someone who takes them home.

In the study, scientists plan to first learn how these turtles move in their natural territory. Seven are wired with transmitters.