Meet Michigan's Rarest Turtles!
I like turtles. Yeah — the classic YouTube Video brought to you by a kid dressed as a zombie had it right all along — but the problem is that he never specifies which kinds of turtles he likes.
So, let us seize the opportunity to fill a knowledge gap and talk turtle-y to you. In total, Michigan has 10 turtle species: Blanding’s Turtle, Common Map Turtle, Common Musk Turtle, Common Snapping Turtle, Eastern Box Turtle, Painted Turtle, Red-eared Slider, Spiny Soft-shelled Turtle, Spotted Turtle and the Wood Turtle, three of which are threatened, and one is a species of special concern.
All species suffer from things like habitat fragmentation, pollution, road crossing accidents, and nest predation by their predators. But for turtles, things are a bit more complicated. Turtles are beautiful, friendly, long-living, and easy to care for, which makes them a big target for poachers in the illegal pet trade. These turtle thieves will track down individual populations of our most beautiful turtles, remove as many as they can find and sell them to make a quick buck.
The illegal pet trade is a big issue, because turtles are definitely homebodies and don’t venture far from the places where they were born. Conservation scientists track turtle populations at specific locations pretty closely to ensure that there are still turtles in the future. Most turtles also take a long time to reach sexual maturity, which means that any efforts to restore a species to historic population levels prior to a population decline can take decades to make an impact.
So, instead of taking turtles from their home habitats, let’s instead celebrate the fact that we get to live on the same landscapes as these friendly slow-pokes! Observing them is a gift, and trying to keep the locations of the following species away from poachers is a top-tier priority for their long-term health. You can definitely share photos that you take, but try to remove any location information from these images and only disclose species observations to trusted conservation professionals.
As you can tell, we’ve got a soft spot for those who are down on their luck here at Pleasant Peninsula, so let’s talk about the rarer turtles you might come across:
Blanding's Turtle
State Status: Species of Special Concern
These dudes are a bit unforgettable. Bright banana-yellow on their bellies, mostly dark blue/gray on top, with speckles all across their shells. We tend to see them in marshy, flooded areas that are pretty close to a moving body of water, like a river or stream. But you can find them in any clean, shallow water with abundant aquatic vegetation and soft mud along the bottom. They don’t spend all their time in the water, though, as they need open areas for nesting. These turtles are a species of special concern here in Michigan, and their populations are being monitored closely to ensure that the species remains (somewhat) common in Michigan.
Learn More About Blanding's Turtles
Eastern Box Turtle
State Status: Threatened
Boy howdy, are Box Turtles one of our FAVORITE species to encounter! These turtles are breathtaking to see in real life. Whenever we see one, we like to take a picture of the pattern on its shell, because it’s just like a fingerprint and is unique to that specific individual!
All Eastern Box Turtles tend to be a mix of black with yellow/orange markings, but the coloration of specific turtles varies a lot. Eastern Box Turtles spend most of their time on land looking for insects, plants, berries, flowers and mushrooms to eat. They’re omnivorous, so they go wherever the food is, but they spend most of their time on land! Boxers are members of the genus Terrapene, which basically just indicates that they have a dome-like shell that they can retract their head and legs into to avoid becoming a meal for predators. This is particularly advantageous for them, as they can live longer than 50 years — with some unverified reports of living over 100 years old!
So, if you’ve ever seen a box turtle and taken a photo of it, try to see if you can relocate the exact same one at the same location you first found it. Odds are, it’s still living on turtle time without a care in the world.
Learn More About Eastern Box Turtles
Spotted Turtle
State Status: Threatened
One of, if not, the cutest turtle species in the entire globe lives right here in our own backyard. Spotted Turtles are small, about the size of your hand at the biggest, and can be found in specific wetlands throughout the lower-half of the Lower Peninsula. They are mostly black with bright yellow spots all over their shells and skin. These turtles require clean, shallow bodies of slow-flowing water with a muddy or mucky bottom to it. Large open marshes, wet prairies, fens and swamps are good places to check for Spotted Turtles. They are often seen sunning themselves on fallen logs, on top of tufts of grasses or sedges, or even hanging out on top of Muskrat lodges! Their diet is pretty omnivorous, eating things like cranberries, worms, slugs, salamanders, tadpoles and fish — but they usually only eat while in the water. So, if you’re in the need of a pick-me-up today, Google “cute spotted turtle pics” and check them out for yourself.
Learn More About Spotted Turtles
Wood Turtle
State Status: Threatened
Wood Turtles look like they could beat you in an arm-wrestling competition and not feel bad about making you look weak in front of your grandma. Yet, somehow, they’re the chillest turtles out there. Their highly textured brown shells have pyramid-like ridges all over it and just kind of look like the forest floor when viewed from above.
Kind of boring, we know, but when you see them from the sides, suddenly they have bright orange skin that peeks out from within the shell, and their heads are mostly black. Definitely a “more than meets the eye” situation, since these silent show-stoppers have adapted to blend into the forest floor. To find Wood Turtles, you need to look at wide, shallow rivers and clear streams that have a decent flow to them in the northern half of the Lower Peninsula and throughout the Upper Peninsula.
Wood Turtles like having shade nearby to blend into, as well as woody debris to sun themselves and take shelter. There hasn’t been a Wood Turtle reported in Kent County since 1996, so keep an eye out if you know of a place where they could be hiding.
If you happen to come across any of these turtle species, be sure to report your observation to the Michigan Natural Features Inventory here: mnfi.anr.msu.edu/species/report. You could make turtle history!