Volunteers round up box turtles on Tybee

Correction: April 5, 2026 2:35 p.m.: Robust populations of box turtles can number nine individuals per acre. An earlier version indicated the wrong number. Also, the method to estimate a box turtle’s age applies only up to age 10.

Early Friday morning, about a dozen volunteers scattered across a wooded patch of land on Tybee, looking for box turtles.

The seven acres of maritime forest is slated to become Solomon Park, a passive nature preserve on the island’s north end. But first, Tybee is cleaning up areas of the park’s perimeter where trash was once dumped. Crews are scheduled to come in Monday with heavy equipment to remove the top layer of soil.

That remediation could prove crushing to box turtles. These terrestrial turtles are too well camouflaged for heavy equipment operators to detect and they’re too slow to scurry out of the way.

So turtle lovers Dr. Lesley Mailler, veterinarian/supervisor of Animal Programs at Oatland Island Wildlife Center and Jordan Gray, external relations manager of the Turtle Survival Alliance, hatched a plan to protect the resident box turtles. They’d round up as many as possible and Mailler would care for them at Oatland Island until it was safe for them to return.

By 8 a.m. Friday, Gray was instructing a group of almost a dozen volunteers, including employees of the nearby Tybee Island Marine Science Center and former council member Paul Wolff. 

“This area already has had some bush hogging done and other clearing activities, but it still has pockets that are nice for turtles to hide in,” Gray said. “So what we want to do as a group is basically fan out in the remediation area and then also a little beyond.” 

The group tried to secure a trained turtle-sniffing dog to assist, but with the remediation set to begin Monday, time proved too short. 

“People with turtle-sniffing dogs are few and far between,” Gray said. 

Without canine assistance, the 11 turtle wranglers relied on their eyesight and patience to find the well-camouflaged turtles, some hiding in plain view.  

Once relatively abundant even in urbanized areas like Savannah, there are fewer box turtles now across their Eastern U.S. range. They’re on the endangered list for some states. 

“Here in Georgia they’re not a listed species, but more and more so they’re becoming a species of conservation concern, and that’s primarily due to habitat destruction,” Gray said. 

Robust populations can have as many as nine individuals per acre. This tract on Tybee not only looks like ideal habitat for box turtles, but Mailler has released more than 20 rehabbed box turtles there over the last decade.

“I usually get four or five a year that have been hit by cars is the main thing, or chewed up by dogs is the other,” said Mailler, a Tybee resident.  “You always want to return box turtles to the area where you find them. Otherwise they will just try to get back to that area. So keeping the Tybee turtles on Tybee is really important for the turtles.”

In short order, the volunteers started finding turtles – in the leaf litter, at the edge of a clearing, in a freshwater wetland. Each had unique coloring and markings, including one with a cross above its head that seemed an apt find on Good Friday.

All told, they rescued five turtles, all male, as evidenced by their red eyes and concave bottom shell. Gray wasn’t surprised. The males are more likely to be out on the prowl for females at this time of year, while the females themselves are still hiding. It’s a quirky strategy for reproduction, he noted.  

Mailler rescued another two turtles on Saturday, a male and a female, she told The Current GA.

Gray showed Friday’s search party how to figure out a young box turtle’s age by counting the annual rings on each scute, or plate, on its shell. It’s a method that works in a box turtle’s first decade. Several of the turtles were in their sixth year by Gray’s count. They can live to be 100, he said.

“Every turtle counts,” Gray said. “So the fact that turtles are a long lived species, have low reproductive success and are also important contributors to the ecosystem (means) saving one animal makes a difference in a population.”

One volunteer found the still-pungent carcass of a crushed box turtle.

“This is why we did this today,” said Gray, holding up the dead turtle. “Most people don’t want to crush a turtle. It’s just that they’re on heavy machinery and they don’t see these animals.”

Gray still remembers the first box turtle he ever found. 

“I was eight years old in Virginia, and it was this beautiful female. I can still picture the patch of woodlands. I can still picture her sitting in there, going over, finding her, picking her up, looking at her. So yeah, it’s still a vivid memory.”

It’s the kind of memory more Tybee kids may be able to make in the future thanks to Friday’s roundup.