A dozen turtle nests have been reported at Nanaimo's Diver Lake this summer, the most ever counted there, with nine of those confirmed to be from endangered western painted turtles.
The increase came in part due to residents reaching out to Nanaimo Area Land Trust's turtle ambassador program. Linda Brooymans, NALT's stewardship manager, said those reports helped confirm seven western painted turtle nests. Six nests were found in total last year.
"We did put out signs at Diver Lake asking people to let us know if they see nesting activity, and we did get quite a bit of a response," Brooymans said. "So that has helped us to record more nests."
The increase doesn't necessarily mean there are more nests than the previous year, she said, but it gives researchers a better understanding of just how many nests there are. Diver Lake is one of the vital western painted turtle habitats NALT monitors in Nanaimo and Lantzville.
Buttertubs Marsh serves as the most active monitoring site, where NALT has spearheaded a community conservation initiative each year since 2023. As part of the initiative, from May to July, volunteers walk rounds through the wetland to search for nesting western painted turtles from 6-8 p.m. each night – the time the turtles like to nest.
When a nesting turtle is found, volunteers wait for the parent to bury its eggs and leave. Once clear, the volunteers place a protective cage over the nest, with holes big enough to let the hatched baby turtles leave, but small enough to prevent predation.
The project was started due to NALT discovering that the Buttertubs eggs were being eaten before the young had a chance to hatch, due to the predator populations that are able to thrive in the urban environment, such as raccoons.
"We know that the predators are a lot more active at Buttertubs so we know a nest will be predated within a day at Buttertubs if we don't cover it, whereas at Diver Lake it seems that predators aren't as active at removing the nests or eating the eggs. We think even if we didn't cover all the nests at Diver Lake, some of those nests would have made it to hatching," Brooymans said.
At Diver Lake, volunteers go out twice a week, but the majority of their monitoring is done via wildlife cameras, with stewards relying heavily on community outreach to report sightings.
"We know that the wildlife cameras aren't capturing all the activities at Diver Lake because the turtles are ranging all over the place, they're ranging into the residential areas, so we don't know all their nesting locations."
On the contrary, at Buttertubs Marsh, Brooymans said stewards can say "very confidently" that all western painted turtle nesting activity has been recorded.
This year at Buttertubs, stewards have recorded and preserved 11 western painted turtle nests, the same as 2024, with some uncertainty surrounding four other sites. The 2023 year had 10-14 nests. The familiarity of the site and its turtle population has led to certain advantages in data collection, with some of the turtles able to be identified due to distinctive features like 'Notchy' which sports a notch on its shell.
"At Buttertubs we have seen some turtles switching their locations where they're laying their eggs, which is interesting," Brooymans said. "We've had more [nests] laid on the decommissioned trail than the dike trail this year."
One theory as to why this could be happening is that younger turtles tend to use different locations when there are multiple nests, while older turtles stay consistent.
"Notchy, she lays her eggs on the dike trail and basically the same spot for three years in a row now. She's got it all down, she's not varying anything, whereas the other turtles are switching it up a little bit. It's interesting, maybe they're looking for the best habitat or maybe they're doing their best to see if one clutch will make it through to hatching."
If someone does see what they believe to be a western painted turtle in the Nanaimo or Lantzville area, even at an area outside of the known sites, they are encouraged to take a photo and e-mail it along with the location, time and date to [email protected].
"For all we know there could be western painted turtles at wetlands in places nobody has identified before, that would be really helpful for us to know if they are there and to be able to follow up on that," Brooymans said.
