Challenges of a changing environment: Urban development impacts a population of Eastern Box Turtles

The Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is a terrestrial turtle, which lives in woodlands. Populations of these turtles are threatened by drastic changes to their environment, such as development projects. This is what happened to a population of box turtles in downtown Lynchburg, VA. We have been researching this population since 1999 using a capture-mark-recapture method. The population was undisturbed until 2020 when a large portion of the study site was timbered for urban development, reducing the size of the habitat from 11 to 2.2 ha. We hypothesize that if the population of box turtles in the post-development forest remnant is viable, then population characteristics, such as home range and density, should be similar to those from the pre-development population as well as those from the literature. We used the shell notch method to mark turtles, and several were monitored with radio telemetry to calculate population size, survival rate, density, and home range size. There was a decrease in population size from 169 to 83 turtles, pre-development to post development, as well as a decrease in home range size from 8622 to 2342 m2, while turtle density increased from 15 to 37 per ha. Some turtles successfully migrated from the timbered portion of the original study site to the forest remnant, resulting in increased density and potentially reducing home range sizes. Multiple juvenile turtles were found for the first time in the remnant population in 2024, indicating successful recruitment despite carapace length data suggesting an aging population. Our research has brought understanding on how box turtles are affected by urban development, which typically reduces and degrades the amount of habitable space for the turtles. Further research needs to be done on how to mitigate the effects of urban development on this species.