Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) select populations COSEWIC assessment and status report 2016

Official title: COSEWIC Assessment and Status Report on the Blanding’s Turtle Emydoidea blandingii Nova Scotia population and Great Lakes/St. Lawrence population in Canada - 2016

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Table of contents

• Document information
• Technical summary
• Status report
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3

Blanding’s Turtle - Nova Scotia population
Endangered
2016

Blanding’s Turtle - Great Lakes/St. Lawrence population
Endangered
2016

Table of contents

• Table of contents
• COSEWIC assessment summary - Nova Scotia population
• COSEWIC assessment summary - Great Lakes / St. Lawrence population
• COSEWIC Executive summary
• Technical summary - Nova Scotia population
• Technical summary - Great Lakes / St. Lawrence population
• Preface
• Wildlife species description and significance
  • Name and classification
  • Morphological description
    • Adults
    • Hatchlings
  • Population spatial structure and variability
  • Designatable units
  • Special significance
• Distribution
  • Global range
  • Canadian range
  • Extent of occurrence and area of occupancy
  • Search effort
• Habitat
  • Habitat requirements
  • Home range
  • Hibernation habitat
  • Nesting habitat
  • Habitat trends
• Biology
  • Life cycle and reproduction
    • Annual life cycle
    • Reproductive ecology
    • Hybridization
    • Longevity and development
    • Population structure and demographics
    • Feeding and diet
    • Mortality
  • Physiology and adaptability
    • Thermoregulation and thermal tolerance
    • Temperature-dependent sex determination
    • Hibernation
  • Dispersal and migration
  • Interspecific interactions
• Population sizes and trends
  • Sampling effort and methods
  • Abundance
  • Fluctuations and trends
  • Rescue effect
• Threats and limiting factors
  • Roads and railways
  • Invasive species
  • Subsidized predators
  • Pet, food and traditional medicine trades
  • Residential and commercial development
  • Natural system modifications
  • Logging and wood harvesting
  • Energy production and mining
  • Human intrusions and disturbance
  • Agriculture
  • Climate change
  • Pollution
  • Number of locations
• Protection, status and ranks
  • Legal protection and status
  • Non-legal status and ranks
  • Habitat protection and ownership
• Acknowledgements and authorities contacted
  • Authorities contacted
• Information sources
• Biographical summary of report writer(s)

List of figures

• Figure 1. Adult Blanding’s Turtle, front view.
• Figure 2. Adult female Blanding’s Turtle, ventral view.
• Figure 3. Well-patterned hatchling Blanding’s Turtle.
• Figure 4. Blanding’s Turtle distribution in North America.
• Figure 5. Minimal predicted distribution of invasive Phragmites a. australis by 2030.

List of tables

• Table 1. Blanding’s Turtle demographics and subpopulation sampling efforts from across the Canadian range.
• Table 2. Summary of subpopulation trends and threats across the Canadian range.
• Table 3. Blanding’s Turtle protection, status and ranks.

List of appendices

Appendix 1

• Appendix 1. The decline in relative abundance of Blanding’s Turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) in Ontario attributable to historic wetland conversion
  • Purpose and scope
  • Methods
  • Range extent of Blanding’s Turtles in Ontario
  • Estimating wetland conversion as an indicator of relative habitat loss (H_t/H_t-1)
  • Estimating relative habitat quantity (Q)
  • Estimating relative population density (D)
  • Data limitations:
  • Results
  • References

Appendix 1 - List of figures

• Figure 1. Ecoregions (OMNRF 2007) clipped to the distribution of Blanding’s Turtles in Ontario digitized from Ontario Reptile and Amphibian Atlas records.
• Figure 2. Wetland loss by township across the Lake Ontario/Lake Erie and Lake Simcoe/Rideau ecoregions within the range of Blanding’s Turtles in Ontario from pre-settlement (~1800) to 2002. Wetland loss data from Southern Ontario Wetland Conversion Analysis Final Report.
• Figure 3. Stacked area plot of the estimated proportions of density-weighted Blanding’s Turtle habitat in Ontario partitioned by ecoregion and plotted against year (See Tables 2, 3).

Appendix 1 - List of tables

• Table 1. Area of wetland land cover classes within the range extent of Blanding’s Turtles in Ontario broken down by ecoregion.
• Table 2. Decline in density-weighted Blanding’s Turtle habitat across the range extent in Ontario.
• Table 3. Trends in the distribution of density-weighted habitat of Blanding’s Turtles across ecoregions and time periods scaled
• Appendix 1 Table - Blanding’s Turtle adult densities from mark-recapture studies in Ontario (provided by Teresa Piraino).

Appendix 2

• Appendix 2a. Threats assessment worksheet, Blanding’s Turtle, Nova Scotia population.
• Appendix 2b. Threats calculator - Great Lakes/ St. Lawrence population

Appendix 3

• Appendix 3. Estimating the effect of road mortality on Blanding’s Turtles across Ontario
  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Results & discussion
    • Amount of road in Blanding’s Turtle range in Ontario
    • Road kill rate – Method 1
    • Road kill rate – Method 2
    • Effect on population
  • Acknowledgements
  • Literature cited

Appendix 3 - List of figures

• Figure 1. Observed road kill rates for adult and subadult Blanding’s Turtles from systematic road surveys along four roads in Ontario expressed as percentiles.
• Figure 2. Estimated population decline in adult Blanding’s Turtles from road kill over three generations (120 years), starting from a population of 25,000 adults and based on annual kill rates of 0.2, 0.25, and 0.3 turtles/km.
• Figure 3. Estimated population decline in adult Blanding’s Turtles from road kill over three generations (120 years), starting with a population of 45,000 adults and based on annual kill rates of 0.2, 0.25, and 0.3 turtles/km.

Appendix 3 - List of tables

• Table 1. Amount of various road types in 1x1 km grid squares with recent records of Blanding’s Turtles.
• Table 2. Observed road kill rates for Blanding’s Turtles calculated from the total number of large juveniles or adults found dead on the road each year, divided by the number of kilometres of road surveyed.
• Table 3. Observed kill rates/km for Blanding’s Turtles from two different methods.
• Table 4. Estimated amount of time for a 50% decline in the Ontario adult Blanding’s Turtle population based on three road kill rates and two population size estimates.