Western Painted Turtle Recovery in Lower Mainland Watersheds
The goal of this multi-year project is to support the recovery of the western painted turtle—B.C.’s only remaining native freshwater turtle species—in the Alouette, Coquitlam, and Stave River watersheds.
This project aims to increase populations by releasing head-started turtles, monitoring the populations’ recovery, providing essential habitat—such as basking features and nesting habitat—and monitoring the effectiveness of that habitat.
Update: Turtle recovery continues in Lower Mainland
Many important monitoring, restoration, release, and stewardship actions continued this year in multiple Lower Mainland watersheds to support western painted turtles.
Twenty-one basking surveys were conducted at 11 sites and resulted in 79 habitat use observations. The team captured 38 turtles at five sites and conducted 421 hours of nest monitoring. Forty nests were identified, and some were protected with cages to foster natural recruitment.
Ninety-three head-started (i.e., captive-raised) turtles were released at three sites, and four nesting beaches were maintained or restored.
Executive Summary
The goal of this project is to recover 10 populations of British Columbia’s only remaining native freshwater turtle species; the Pacific Coast population of Western Painted Turtle (WPT) that is federally threatened (SARA-listed) and provincially red-listed, in Lower Mainland Watersheds. This will be accomplished by increasing the recruitment through releasing head-started turtles, monitoring the populations’ recovery, and providing and monitoring effectiveness of essential habitat such as basking features, overwintering and nesting habitat. This project is led by WPT South Coast Recovery Group; a partnership between the Coastal Painted Turtle Project (CPTP) (lead by Aimee Mitchell), Wildlife Preservation Canada (WPC) (lead by Andrea Gielens who operates head-starting at the Vancouver Zoo) and the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship (MWLRS)/BC Parks at the North Vancouver facility (Kendra Morgan-Section Head – Fish and Aquatic Wildlife Resources and currently Briar Hunter, Ecosystems Biologist).
The CPTP has already begun to address immediate threats that may result in direct mortality through measures such as nests predator exclosures, signage, site rehabilitation, and fencing as well as restoring habitat and long-term productivity at the currently known occupied sites in these watersheds (Coquitlam, Alouette and Stave), including Colony Farm, Minnekhada Regional Park, Jerry Sulina Municipal Park and Silvermere Lake. Much of this work was also previously sponsored by FWCP in various multi-species at risk projects in all three watersheds since 2011. However, follow-up monitoring through population assessments have had limited funding from other project supporters. Assessing the functioning of past and planned restoration activities as well as survival and health of head-started individuals is essential in order to effectively apply adaptive management and ensure long-term success of the recovery efforts.
The project objectives are to support and conduct all WPT conservation and recovery activities highlighted in the Provincial Recovery Plan and Federal Recovery Strategy in the Coquitlam, Alouette and Stave watersheds with a focus on currently occupied and augmented sites. This proposed project with FWCP will further address the threats by securing long-term matched funding for the head-starting program as well as for post-release and post-restoration monitoring. Activities include: Head-starting support (staff, food and equipment) both at the Vancouver Zoo (Andrea Gielens) and at MWLRS facility in North Vancouver (Briar Hunter). The field component includes nesting monitoring, habitat restoration, nesting beach maintenance and population monitoring (trapping) to track success of head-started turtles that are released as well as tracking overall population health. In summary, the main objective is to restore, maintain and monitor turtle populations and survival habitat throughout these three Lower Mainland FWCP watersheds. In F24, activities included 21 basking surveys conducted at 11 locations with 79 basking observations made, the Citizen Science sighting sign program resulted in over 225 reports of basking and nesting turtles for a total of 649 observed, nesting surveys were conducted for a total of 421 hours at seven sites with a total of 36 nests confirmed, 38 turtles, mostly headstarts, were captured at five sites and the CPTP formed a partnership with the Silvermere Lake Property Owners Association (SLPOA), who contributed funds and time to develop a restoration plan for nesting area and basking log installation.
These objectives align with several Priority Actions as outlined in the three Watershed Action Plans (Coquitlam-COQ, Alouette-ALU and Stave-SFN); including: Priority 1 – 1) Action 4: Species and Habitat-based Actions for Fish and Wildlife (ALL) – Implement high priority habitat and/or species-based actions, 2) Action 8: Monitoring and Evaluation (ALU and SFN) – Assess success of past habitat-based actions supported by FWCP, 3) Action 17, 20, and 19: Habitat-based actions – Wildlife Species at Risk (COQ, ALU and SFN, respective actions) – Implement priority species and habitat-related conservation actions in recent Recovery Strategies, and Priority 2 – 4) Action 23 and 26: Habitat-based actions-Wildlife (COQ and ALU, respective actions) – Implement wetland and riparian restoration projects that are identified as high priorities through inventory, mapping and assessment.
The first phase of the project (Phase I) was envisioned as a 5-year program (began April 2019), with focus on currently occupied and augmented sites in the watersheds to restore, maintain and monitor WPT populations. Recommendations for future work as part of Phase II (another 5-year project which began in 2024) include an increased focus on population monitoring at all sites to further assess success of recovery actions, following up on past and newly completed restorations and adaptions to head-starting methods to account for external and internal biota/parasite considerations.
Click the provincial database link below to read the full final report for this project.