Eastern Box Turtle Conservation


Pennsylvania Law Governing Native Reptiles and Amphibians

Native Reptiles and Amphibians are regulated by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

The Eastern Box Turtle has NO OPEN SEASON. The DAILY LIMIT is 0 (zero) and POSSESSION LIMIT is 0 (zero).

For Seasons & Limits on REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS  go to the PA Fish and Boat Commission website page:   

                                      www.fish.state.pa.us/fishpub/summary/repamp.html

 

Bucks County Reptile Dealer
Pleads Guilty to Illegally Trading Native Turtles--

 

Site Navigation Guidance

 

For the non-researcher who is interested in Box Turtle Conservation, we think that the best way for you to grasp the information made available at this site (www.ebtct.org)  is to start by clicking the link to "research" (at the right side of the menu bar) and then, after scrolling down toward the bottom of that page, click the link to:  
Field observations of North America’s eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolinacarolina)
 
That particular article provides a nice introduction and retrospective for our work.
 
It also provides background that would help one understand any of the more esoteric comments made in many of the other research links and/or the informative turtle-movement map postings (see IMAGES link) at the site.
 
 
 
 

Carapace Color development:

Many of you know that we've been working to present our novel findings on carapace color development in the eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) that serendipitously emerged during our long-term repatriation field studies for this species.
To properly present the phenomenon, we wanted to provide readers with numerous color images documenting the various aspects of carapacial color development and changes that we observed (a goal which faced prohibitive paper-publishing costs).
But, thanks to Mark Miller (President and special publications editor), the Philadelphia Herpetological Society provided the peer review for our article, and then prepared it for posting as a special publication (#2009_02) of the Society on their web site, to obviate our financial obstacles and enable the work to be easily available to the herpetology community.
Mark has spent many months on the project and we are happy to inform you that, thanks to his kind help and unstinting effort, you can now examine our report  -----

     {Photo-dependent localized color development in the eastern box turtle carapace.}  

 
 
Please check out the   Research   tab for links to the above article as well as other published articles, updates, and assorted commentaries on the Eastern Box Turtle
 
*New update!- includes author's post publication comments-
---------------------see Research article  Some Box Turtle Conservation Issues

also,
For general information about  Ranavirus, click HERE

and for a pre-publication draft of "A natural history of Ranavirus in an eastern box turtle population" click HERE


News update :  2011 is "Year of the Turtle" !   

Turtle conservation groups in partnership with PARC

are designating 2011 as the Year of the Turtle

for information click HERE