Most turtle nests don't survive – so how do turtles?

Some animals, and more specifically turtles, reproduce and sustain their populations – and simply defy the odds.

Most readers are probably familiar with the huge effort centered each year on helping endangered sea turtles nest and reproduce successfully. Barriers protect nest sites, volunteers protect nests and young turtles, and there are guidelines for outdoor lighting to avoid disorienting the turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. Two coyotes were even removed recently from Kiawah Island after killing three loggerhead sea turtles attempting to nest on the beach. With human help, about 70% of sea turtle eggs on the South Carolina coast result in baby turtles reaching the ocean.

But all of those pond turtles basking in the sun around Daniel Island have to reproduce too. Less is generally known about, and far less is done to help the reproductive efforts of our sliders, cooters, and snapping turtles. Nesting success is not closely tracked, but the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources estimates that as many as 90% of slider nests and eggs are destroyed each year in our state. That is a staggering percentage to overcome in the world of Darwinian selection, but the turtles seem to hold their own.

This writer recently encountered a female red-eared slider digging a nest just off a sidewalk (and in plain sight) during a run here on Daniel Island. After a few photos, the turtle was left to finish her business. Upon examination later that same evening to mark the nest, it was found to have already been destroyed by a gray squirrel, which was still present among the eggs.

SCDNR lists primary turtle nest predators as raccoons, foxes, skunks, opossums, coyotes, snakes, crows, and gulls, but notes that gray squirrels will destroy nests as well. In North Carolina, one biologist even observed a red fox eating a turtle’s eggs as they were still being laid.

Thanks to a nesting season lasting from spring through summer, and to turtles laying as many as three clutches of up to 20 eggs per clutch per season, enough young turtles seem to appear each year to sustain the species.

If hatched late in the season, some young turtles will even burrow farther into the nest and wait for the next spring to emerge just to improve their odds.

There is no shortage of online information about how to protect a nest or help nesting turtles be successful. Just be advised that, generally, wild turtles may not be kept or raised in captivity. The SCDNR website lists the specific regulations that apply to each species.

As for how to help the turtles out, perhaps the best course of action is just to leave them alone and let their nesting go unnoticed, if possible. Somehow Mother Nature has allowed for their extremely low nesting success rates. While the turtles are slow and deliberate, to quote Ecclesiastes, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,” and the turtles will probably be here long after we humans are gone.