1 Million Turtles Community Conservation Program
Spotlight on community turtle conservation
Springfield Pond Wetland in Central Coast NSW Shines
Thank you to Glenys Ray for sharing this story.
Here is the story...
An old orange orchard dam at Springfield, on the NSW Central Coast, became part of a subdivision where it transitioned to being a wetland. Apparently, someone dumped an aquarium into the wetland around 2016 and very unfortunately also dumped 3 very noxious aquatic weeds at the same time.
One of the weeds was salvinia which rapidly blanketed the whole wetland around Christmas 2017. We weren’t even aware that turtles lived in the wetland until they ‘miraculously’ appeared a few years later when a small section of weed was removed. They had survived years with no light and minimal oxygen and their shells were very slimy at first.
They were a regular sight sunning on the weir during the warmer months – mostly Murray River shortnecks.
Photo credit: Glenys Ray
As the council worked to remove the weeds they employed booms to allow them to work on sections at a time and so the turtles started sunning themselves on the booms. Investigations were made to try to identify a raft or similar that they could use once the booms were removed (the salvinia battle continues so the booms remain for the time being), without success.
We were amazed when we saw a Facebook post for @1MillionTurtlesConservation program showing turtle islands. The original idea was for a raft to sun themselves and in our ignorance it never occurred to us that the foxes that regularly roam would take their eggs.
Springfield Residents Association successfully applied for State Govt funding to purchase an island. Central Coast Council insisted that it be portable so it could be removed without great expense if no longer needed in the future.
The community is looking forwardly excitedly to seeing it arrive in the near future and to see turtles breeding and basking on the deck.