Endangered turtle species crawls into land-use issues

By CYNTHIA HOCHSWENDER

An article in the Dec. 20 issue of The Lakeville Journal began this two-part series on bog turtles, a tiny and endangered reptile that is being used as a weapon to slow several development projects in the Northwest Corner.

The tiny bog turtle, living quietly in the muck of bogs and fens around Litchfield and Dutchess counties, is finding itself more and more frequently in courthouses and town halls. This unassuming little reptile is a federally endangered species, and anti-development forces are using it with increased frequency as a cudgel to keep everything from golf clubs to horse paddocks from being built on boggy wetlands.

As a result, builders and town officials are becoming annoyed at the turtles. When someone comes to an inland-wetlands commission meeting and says, “You can’t build there, it might be a bog turtle habitat,� the response is often a groan, an eye roll and the gruff accusation that, “No one has ever actually seen a bog turtle.�

In fact, many people have seen them, including representatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, as well as local nature experts, including one former first selectman.

Why all the hostility?

Bog turtles are simple little creatures. They live in mucky fens, and stay out of sight. They have been described as “secretive� and “mysterious� — although one federal wildlife expert pointed out that bog turtles are unique because they don’t recede into their shells if you pick them up. They look at you.

But they can be hard to find. And when a building project threatens to have an impact on a bog turtle habitat, it can delay a building project for years while the federal government does research on whether bog turtles live at or near the site, and whether the proposed project might have a negative impact on the habitat.

Government officials can then force builders to modify a project to reduce or eliminate any negative impacts.

They will not, however, put an absolute halt to those building projects.

Michael Klemens is a member of the Salisbury Planning and Zoning Commission and a well-known expert on turtles of all kinds. He wrote the state guide to turtles, “Amphibians and Reptiles in Connecticut,� and he prepared the bog turtle recovery plans for both the state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It’s not a question of stopping projects,� he said emphatically. “And if that’s how people view it, it’s going to create a backlash against the animal.�

That seems to be happening already, he noted with regret. Bog turtles are likely to impact four projects in the Northwest Corner this year. The groups that are enlisting the aid of the turtle rarely talk about how the projects can be modified to protect the wetlands; their  language suggests instead that these projects cannot be built because they might impact the turtle habitats.

Yale Farm in Norfolk

Of those four projects, the one that has received the most publicity is the Yale Farm Golf Club, which New York City developer Roland Betts hopes to build on a farm that straddles the Norfolk and North Canaan borders.

Two other projects are in Sharon. The bog turtle has been enlisted to help halt development of a property owned by Alan DePretis, who has in the past two years proposed putting up a community for retirees, a high-end alcohol and drug abuse treatment center and even affordable housing.

The other is a proposed horse paddock that Dr. Joel Danisi would like to build on his property near the Still Meadows wetland,which is the bog below Sharon Center School.

The bog turtle may also become an issue in the proposed expansion of Noble Horizons in Salisbury.

These projects can not be definitively stopped if anyone can prove that they will impact the bog turtle habitats that are believed to be nearby. But they may have to be modified.

The Yale Farm project is about to move into what the federal government calls Phase Two: Research in Phase One showed that the area around the proposed golf club could be a bog turtle habitat (although Klemens disputes this, saying that the wetlands there, at an elevation of 1,100 to 1,400 feet, are too high and too cold for the turtles).

The Phase Two study was called into play because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that there could conceivably be an impact on a bog turtle habitat if the golf course is built and because one turtle was found in North Canaan on a road (at 700 feet) in 1998.

“One turtle does not a population make,� Klemens said. He thinks that one turtle was an anomaly, and had perhaps been washed out of its natural habitat by heavy flooding that year, or some other freak of nature.

The Phase Two study could take two years (the turtles are generally found in late spring; if none are uncovered in the first year of the study, biologists can come back the following year and look again) and cost more than $100,000, according to Klemens.

That fee will be paid by the developer.

If no turtles are found, the government will issue the permits that are needed. If they are found, then the club’s plans will be modified, if necessary, to ensure that the quality and quantity of the nearby wetlands is not impacted.

Trying to be proactive

Klemens, who is a professional consultant to towns (and developers) in Connecticut and New York, says he has offered many times to come before town officials and explain to them where the bog turtles live and how town regulations can be enacted to protect them.

If towns can be proactive, he believes, they (and the landowners who want to build) will stop finding themselves in a defensive posture. Bog turtle habitats will be recorded in town documents and builders and landowners will know right from the start where and what they can build in the affected areas.

Officials in Dutchess and Columbia counties have been very proactive and have set up laws to protect their bog turtle habitats, Klemens said.

Connecticut officials have been more inclined  to, well, pull their heads into their shells.

Ed Kirby, chairman of the Sharon Inland Wetlands Commission, bristled when asked about bog turtles. No one he knows of has seen one, he said. And he said he feels they are being used as a cudgel by people who don’t care about the turtles and who just want to do anything they can to halt development.

Peter Oliver, who is the administrator of the Salisbury Conservation Commission, said as far as he is concerned the jury is still out on the bog turtle and whether (and where) it lives in the Northwest Corner.

“I think if an inventory of an endangered species is done by  a reputable scientist and there is something more than ‘I think’ as a basis of an allegation, then it should be taken seriously,â€� he said. But, he added, “we are a country of law and we anticipate some level of proof if we’re going to base a judgment on it.â€�

Are there any turtles here?

The turtles have, of course, been seen by many people and documented by state and federal wildlife experts.

Certainly Klemens has, although he will not say where he has seen them. So has Julie Victoria,  a biologist for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Tony Tur, an endangered species specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is absolutely confident that the bog turtles can be found in these two towns.  None of them likes to say where, however.

For one thing, there is danger of poachers coming in and trying to sell stolen bog turtles on the black market, where they can fetch as much as $1,000 each.

Also, many of the bog turtles are found on privately owned land;  private landowners usually don’t like nature lovers searching for the turtles on their property. This is especially true if the landowners want to build on their land in the future, or sell it eventually without encumbrances.

Some people have seen the turtles, and not realized it. Klemens recalled an incident about two years ago when someone picked up a bog turtle on a road, took it to the Grove in Salisbury, and played with it in the sand. Someone realized it was a bog turtle (one that Klemens had previously captured, marked and released) and it was returned to its bog. Sadly, it was found dead not long after that.

The average person, as Tur pointed out, is not likely to stumble across a bog turtle, however, unless they go out looking for one.

Reach down into the muck

Which is exactly how retired dentist Bill Zovickian has found so many of them. Zovickian lived and worked in Sharon for about 20 years, and recently moved to Georgia, although he returns to Sharon to work at his dental office once a month. He is comes back because he loves this area and because he is an avid reptile enthusiast.

Zovickian claims that he made the first official bog turtle sightings in the area, back in 1975. He has photos of the turtles in Sharon and in nearby New York state from the 1990s.

He hasn’t been as active in documenting them lately, however, because he no longer lives here.

Retired Sharon First Selectman Robert Moeller also has seen many bog turtles — but not lately.

Moeller was director of the Sharon Audubon Center for 15 years, before moving to his office at Town Hall, where he worked for two decades.

In the years when he was working for Audubon, and was outside all the time, Moeller saw a half dozen or so bog turtles. Well, actually, “found� is probably a better word than “saw.�

Here’s how you can tell if you’ve found a bog turtle, according to Moeller: If you’re walking through a muddy bog and you step on something hard, chances are it’s a bog turtle. If you want to be sure, reach down into the muck and fish around until you find something that feels like a turtle.

Zovickian and Moeller seem to be the last of the amateur turtle hunters in the Northwest Corner. Both say they haven’t seen many turtles in recent years — but, they agree, they  haven’t seen many because they haven’t been out looking for them.

Impact on the habitat

It almost doesn’t matter if the turtles are found at a building site, though, according to Klemens. What matters is if the activity on the building site will have a negative impact on the bog turtle habitat. According to federal law, hurting the animal’s home is as illegal as hurting the animal itself.

In the four building projects where bog turtles are being discussed, the towns and builders will have to answer these questions: Do the turtles occur on the site? Will the project drain into a bog turtle habitat? And is the activity at the proposed building project going to have a negative impact on that habitat or the animals themselves?

Until town officials in Connecticut decide to do their own studies and create a map of  where the bog turtles live, Klemens warned, the federal government is likely to be called in at the last minute to force modifications that might have been made in the early stages of planning.

As for the Yale Farm project, Klemens said he would prefer to see the federal  government putting the same time and energy into protecting the bogs in Sharon and Salisbury where he knows the turtles actually exist.

“In Salisbury and Sharon you have known bog turtle habitats, and some turtles have been followed for 10 or 15 years,� he said. “That’s a whole different level of concern. I would rather see them in Sharon and Salisbury, scrutinizing these applications. �

That may never happen, however.

“The fact of the matter is that where the bog turtles are found is far from the offices where these  people happen to  be,â€� Zovickian said. “They don’t have time to look and it’s very time consuming to find them. In New York state, they have a very good guy who goes out and looks for them, and finds them. But there is less funding in Connecticut.â€�

If a bog turtle is brought up with enough vigor by opponents of a building project, he said, then the federal government can get involved, and can require a search. But not every search is successful.

“I can go out to areas where I  know I’ve marked turtles, and not necessarily see them,â€� Victoria said. “It does require a lot of intense observation.â€�

For the time being, the federal government has shown no interest in the two Sharon cases.

“Powerful people raise these issues and the turtle gets caught in the middle,â€� Klemens said. “Frankly, I feel terrible for the turtle.â€�