The turtle trackers.In a tiny pocket of a suburban landscape in Dutchess County, New York--wedged between a high school, a golf course, and a freeway--an uninteresting (jargon) uninteresting - 1. Said of a problem that, although nontrivial, can be solved simply by throwing sufficient resources at it. 2. Also said of problems for which a solution would neither advance the state of the art nor be fun to design and code. Hackers regard uninteresting problems as intolerable wastes of time, to be solved (if at all) by lesser mortals.-looking patch of forest and swamp is actually a multi-million dollar artificial habitat built to protect and study a handful of turtles. "In the last 10 years much has been said about how frogs are not doing well around the world. As a group, turtles are as bad off," says Erik Kiviat, executive director of Hudsonia, an environmental research group in New York's Hudson Valley. Hudsonia strives to protect one species, the Blanding's turtle, which is listed as threatened in the state. The reptiles live up to 80 years and reach sexual maturity in their mid-teens, although many don't live long enough to reproduce. Raccoons favor their eggs, people collect them as pets, they're sensitive to habitat fragmentation and loss, and many perish on roadways. (Blanding's turtles travel a mile or more to find optimal nesting sites and often cross highways.) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hudsonia created this particular habitat eight years ago, just before a nearby high school expanded and paved over the existing wetland the turtles called home. About 25 adult Blanding's turtles now reside in several swamps SWAMPS - Special Warfare Automated Mission Planning System (Naval Special Warfare Command, San Diego, CA) beneath the trees, most wearing a small radio glued to their shells. There are human-centered reasons to protect each turtle from extinction. "Something about turtles' skin resists infection. They can sustain injuries and heal wounds that would often kill other creatures," says Kiviat. It is possible that at some future date a specific species of turtle may hold genetic answers useful to human medicine. For now, the focus is on keeping the turtles alive and safe. While no human but an informed researcher would look at this patch of forest twice (except perhaps ruefully upon losing a golf ball in the muck), it remains a small haven for Blanding's turtles and the other creatures that have moved in with them: spotted turtles, ribbon snakes, muskrats muskrat, North American aquatic rodent. The common muskrats, species of the genus Ondatra, are sometimes called by their Native American name, musquash. They are found in marshes, quiet streams, and ponds through most of North America N of Mexico, but are absent from the extreme W and SE United States. A common muskrat resembles a large house rat with its tail flattened on either side; its hind feet are partially webbed between the toes., and birds such as the red-winged blackbird and cedar waxwing cedar waxwing waxwing, any of three species of perching songbirds of the Northern Hemisphere. Waxwings have crests (raised only in alarm) and sleek brownish-gray plumage with flecks of red pigment resembling sealing wax on the wings and a yellow band on the tail tip. The cedar waxwing, called cherry bird and cedar bird, breeds throughout most of Canada and the United States.: see waxwing.. Their habitat off-limits to human recreation and industry, four-legged, winged, and exoskeleton 1. All hard parts, such as hair, teeth, and nails, that develop from the ectoderm or mesoderm in vertebrates. 2. A hard outer structure, such as the shell of an insect, that provides protection or support for an organism. For more information about the Blanding's turtle project, visit www.hudsonia.org. |
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