pond_turtle
TURTLES: Researchers with the National Park Service, Sonoma State University and the San Francisco Zoo have been collecting data on western pond turtles in Point Reyes—including weighing the animals, measuring carapaces and eggs and tracking—as part of a project to reintroduce the reptile to areas in southern Marin like Redwood Creek, where they were recently discovered to be extirpated. As seashore biotechnician Tim Bernot weighed one specimen recently, he praised California’s only native freshwater turtle. “The exotic turtles will bite you. These are very gentle native turtles,” he said.   Samantha Kimmey

Seashore biotechnician Tim Bernot pulled out a telemetry receiver on a recent Thursday morning, listening to the metronome-like clicks as he drove a park truck to a ranch pond to check turtle traps. The pace of the clicks, sourced from emitters glued to a female pond turtle’s carapace, tells him when the turtle may be out of the water and on dry land—in other words, whether she might be digging a nest, which are almost…