Habitat Destruction

As urbanization and suburbanization spread to make room for an exponentially growing human race, turtle habitats are lost, degraded, and fragmented. Turtles travelling on traditional migration routes to winter, feed, and nest are met with either impassable and/or life-threatening barriers. Roads and highways dissect woodlands and wetlands, killing thousands of turtles each year. Walls and fences that separate humankind from the natural world also block migration corridors.

Both clearcuts and shopping centers create open spaces that subject turtles to relentless attacks by predators; lawns and parking lots give turtles little cover. Predators such as raccoons, crows, and rats, adept at living off human waste mismanagement, become the new neighbors of dwindling turtle populations while domesticated dogs and cats cause irreparable damage to turtle habitats by finding and destroying turtle nests alongside natural predators.

And of course, development is synonymous with pollution, lowering reproductive rates and causing deformations. Monoculture crops not only create the open area that subject turtles to predators, but also generate enormous amounts of pesticide run-off, poisoning streams that turtles use for basking, streams that are already threatened by invasive plants that wipe-out native riparian species.

And as if that weren’t enough, these streams and rivers are often subjected to channelization; streams are straightened and bends in rivers may be removed in order to avoid agricultural fields. Or in some cases, to avoid oil wells. Larger bodies of water are equally at risk. The ocean is subject to an incredible number of pollutants, and coastal homes and resorts have ruined sea turtle nesting beaches from the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean Sea.