Hi everyone and welcome to the 2020 Box Turtle blog (a.k.a. The BEST blog)! My name is Kelcie Fredrickson and I am a rising second year veterinary student at the University of Illinois. The blog’s main focus will be on our health surveillance program which monitors box turtle population health and will feature my student [...]
You may be wondering, what is the point of this project? What is so special about the Blanding's turtle? Here is the scoop on Blanding's turtles and why they need our help! A Background on Blanding's Blanding's turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) are best known for their brilliant yellow chin and throat, and their notched upper jaw, [...]
Left to right: Dr. Matt Allender, me, Dr. Erin Newman, You Na Jeon This week, we added a few more helping hands to the Kane County Blanding's team! You Na Jeon, our visiting fourth-year veterinary student from Wisconsin, stuck around to help for the week and on Wednesday, we had a surprise visit [...]
Hello again! I promise I haven't forgotten about you guys; it's been difficult to update my blog with all my adventures the past couple weeks since I haven't had access to internet! So much happened during Week 1, I hardly know where to start! The first week was filled with fun, new experiences, friendly visits [...]
Hi there! My name is Aubrey Engel and I'm a second year vet student in the Wildlife Epidemiology Lab (WEL)! This summer I will be heading up north to Kane County, IL to pilot a new health study in Blanding's turtles (Emydoidea blandingii). This study will be very similar to the one my colleagues, Kirsten [...]
Our final week of turtle team began at 4:00am when Marta and I met at the lab to pack all of our supplies and equipment into a SUV. Just as the sun began to rise at 5am, we were off and headed to Tennessee. With only a couple of quick food and rest stops, we [...]
After our week of trudging through marshes in heavy wadders, we made our way back to land to finish off our last turtle team week in Vermilion County. While this week was slower than our previous ones, we still managed to find 27 turtles in 4 days! The highs of the week were finding a [...]
Our next adventure took us to the North side of Chicago in Lake County were we met up with our Blanding's Team, John and Lauren, to help out for the week and do a little team bonding. We worked with the Blanding's Turtle, an endangered aquatic turtle species, that looks like it's always smiling because [...]
The first week of Turtle Team is in the books! And I guess this blog... Our first week was very close to home in Vermilion County at four different sites within the Forest Preserve. We brought with us: John and his turtle dogs Paulo, a visiting veterinarian from Peru 20 veterinary medicine students The week [...]
John Cooling Two of the Dogs off With Water A crucial part of turtle team are the turtle dogs and their owner, John Rucker. One of the turtle dogs cooling off in the creek We use a highly trained canine search team of Boykin Spaniels to find the turtles and safely [...]
