Urban sprawl and insufficient relief measures have left an Ottawa-area freshwater turtle facing extinction within the decade, says new research from the University of Ottawa and Trent University, which tracked changes to the turtle's habitat over a 10-year period.
Specifically, the development of Terry Fox Drive in the city's west end has led to a dangerous decline in the Blanding's turtle's habitat, leading to a 70% decline in adult population size, despite mitigating measures such as wildlife fencing, new wetlands and wildlife passage placement.
The study,"Demographic evidence that development is not compatible with sustainability in semi-urban freshwater turtles," was published inProfessor Gabriel Blouin-Demers, alongside lead author Anne-Christine Auge, Ph.D. candidate, and Dennis Murray from Trent University, tracked changes inover a decade while conducting a population viability analysis to predict future population trends.
"There was a lot of opposition to the development along Terry Fox Drive, precisely because of the presence of Blanding's turtles," says Blouin-Demers, a full professor in the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Science."Now we know that the project will have caused the extinction of the population.
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