Read more about the project at Brock
News, at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre Blog and in The
Orchid (read the October edition as a pdf, 2.3mb).
Eco-Kare in cooperation with the Ontario Road Ecology
Group and other partners is creating an inventory of the approximately 700
turtle crossing signs in Ontario
to determine where and how they are placed in the landscape. The project is
funded by the 2011 Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) Highway
Infrastructure Innovation Funding Program (HIIFP).
We need citizen scientists, volunteers, and field
technicians to help us collect the information. If you encounter a turtle
crossing sign, please use the form below to obtain location data as well as other
information related to the sign.
Ideally, we would like GPSed location data at the sign
location in addition to a described location.
If your agency has collected data on signs in
electronic format (eg Word or Excel), please e-mail the information to our contact address .
If you prefer, you can submit information on a
hardcopy datasheet (52K pdf) for use in the field.
Thank you for contributing to this project.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Turtle Crossing Signs Don’t Work-
Researcher studying ways to improve them.
THE BROCK NEWS, BROCK
UNIVERSITY , 2/27/14--The province of Ontario
has the highest density of roads of any location in Canada . This news is great if
you’re a driver, but not so if you are a turtle.
While humans move efficiently back and forth across
this landscape, other creatures, including several turtle species, are at risk
by this crowded network of pavement, especially when the roads separate them
from part of their natural habitat.
One Brock researcher has partnered with conservation
groups across Ontario
to help alleviate the problem.
John
Middleton, associate professor with
the Department of Tourism and Environment, has
received a grant from the Ministry of Transportation, under its Highway
Infrastructure Innovation Funding Program (HIIFP). He’ll apply lessons learned
from the use of turtle crossing signs on municipal roads to the potential use
of wildlife area awareness signs on provincial roads.
Middleton is principal investigator on the project.
The work will be conducted in close collaboration with co-principal
investigator Kari Gunson, from Eco-Kare International; Fred Schuler, from
Bishop Mills Natural History Centre; and the Ontario Road Ecology Group (OREG).
Middleton will examine the way in which roadways deal
with populations of turtles. Five species in Ontario are considered to be at risk, he
said.
“Turtles need to move across the landscape to live, to
eat and to reproduce. Where they live is a different place from where they lay
eggs,” Middleton explained. “Figures show there are huge numbers of turtles being
killed crossing roads. A disproportionate number are females because they are
the ones moving to lay eggs.”
This project will determine whether the placement of
warning signs can alleviate some of the deaths by studying how and where the
signs are being placed by ecology groups and municipalities across the
province. The project involves mapping current sign locations, and questioning
the circumstances in which the signs have been placed. Answers to these
questions will guide future Ministry of Transportation policy around sign
placement, and may even lead to new approaches in road construction.
There are an estimated 700 turtle signs on municipal
roads across the province, but they have not been collated into one database.
With the inventory in place, the project will also use a geographical model to
predict hotspots of crossings for turtles, snakes and frogs, and determine if
the predicted hotspots are the actual locations of the warning signs. Hotspots
are determined most obviously by reports of turtle road-kill and turtle
crossing locations.
OREG has a network of volunteers and workers who track
the information through an online database. A recent interactive website tool
allows anyone to report this information as well. OREG is run as an affiliated
group through the conservation side of the Toronto Zoo.
The purpose of the MTO’s grant program is to fund
research at Ontario
colleges and universities to encourage basic and applied research in various
aspects of transportation infrastructure.
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