A few months ago, NCF’s primary turtle expert decided to attach a GoPro camera to the top of a hard hat and set off into the scrub oak to show what it’s like to track turtles through the shrubby wetlands on Nantucket.  See our Turtle project video (tracking footage shows up around 1:45) to see how tough it can be to follow these little turtles as they move to different habitats over the year!

We track individual turtles to help get an idea of what habitat they like to use and when.  This helps us understand how they are using an area, how much space they need and which habitats we need to focus on protecting to conserve spotted turtle populations.  This is one of the tools we have to try and understand how wildlife use habitat – plants are easy to track because they stay in one place – wildlife is a little trickier!