Blanding's Turtles are crossing roads to nest right now — the most dangerous…

June 25, 2026Lansing Loamy Plain

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are crossing roads to nest right now — the most dangerous weeks of their year. They take 15 to 20 years to reach breeding age, so each adult lost to traffic removes decades of reproduction from the population's future.

A turtle population can look stable long after it has quietly stopped replacing itself. Records from the region this spring show scattered sightings, but the broader picture is one of stress: most of the water bodies in the area carry pollution designations that impair their capacity to support long-term turtle populations. Road mortality and degraded wetland habitat are working in concert — a combination that can unravel a population far faster than any single threat alone.

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More about Blanding's Turtles

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