This past week the Walder team and Dr. Kaitlin Moorehead (Ph.D. student in WEL) worked with Du Page field biologist, Dan Thompson, to trap turtles in Du Page County. Dan Thompson has been lead biologist of the Blanding’s turtle restoration project since ~2015 and has kept it going despite many obstacles the project has faced. [...]
On Friday May 26th, Lake County team, Walder team, box turtle team, and Dr. Kaitlin Moorehead (Ph.D. student in WEL) came together to trap and track turtles in Lake County. Everyone split up the work that was left to do for the week and conquered. During this time, the team caught seven hand captures and [...]
This week is brought to you by World Turtle Day and very sticky marsh mud. While Week 2 was a short week for us, we were still able to have a successful haul and celebrate World Turtle Day ft Dr. Kaitlin. This week, we were mainly stationed in one location. We started off the [...]
We started this week nice and early on Monday morning setting a plethora (27!) of traps along the Des Plaines river with Paul from the USDA! While we didn't catch any turtles that day, Kami and I did get some good practice with using the waders. Each of the different species we work with have [...]
What a week! This was a trap week, and we had some wild stuff happening. We caught plenty of turtles, and even a few Blanding's that have never been caught before! We gave them ID's and names right there in the field and released them. One of them became "Porkchop" - he's definitely going to [...]
This week the Walder team visited Lake County’s field site where Varun Seth and Marg Bednarek track Blanding’s turtles. On the first day out with the team, Sam Johnson (Walder Foundation research A victory picture of Marg thinking this was Mickey before finding out it was really Honeybunz. technician) teamed up with Marg [...]
Hello turtle-loving humans! Thank you for your interest in the Wildlife Epidemiology Laboratory’s (WEL) participation in the Walder Foundation. The focus of this research is to understand infectious disease epidemiology at the community level, so instead of focusing on a single species of turtle (as the Kane County and Walder Foundation Team taking names [...]
And just like that, our first week of the season has come to and end and boy has it been an adventure. We started off the week with the amazing Dr. Laura and Sam helping us catch a mix of Blandings, Painted, and Snapping turtles. Our Kane Co field Biologist Bill was amazing and placed [...]
Hello Turtle Friends and Welcome to the first official post of the 2023 Kane County Turtle Field Season blog! This blog is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood vet students Surina and Nick. Now for a little get to know you... Surina just finished her first year of veterinary medical school at the [...]
