Dan Holland, as a Ph.D. student at Southwestern Louisiana University, surveyed the South Fork Kern River Valley from 1986-1994 and found no evidence of hatchling survival. This lack of recruitment of hatchlings to the population means that, as adults die, the species will disappear from the valley. Headstarting is a process by which hatchlings are raised in captivity until they are large enough to avoid predators and then are released to the wild, While it has been successful with other species of turtles, previous attempts with Western Pond Turtles had failed. With the guidance of Dr. Frank Slavins and Paul Cowell at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, WA, the eggs were collected and incubated successfully. Once the females are collected from the wild, they are x-rayed to determine how many eggs they are carrying.
Labor is induced with oxytocin.
A local veterinarian, Dr. Thomas Jenkins, donated all the services and medicine needed to induce egg laying. The females are released at their capture site soon after the eggs are laid. The eggs are then incubated in a dry substrate for 80-100 days. In other studies, attempts to incubate in moist substrates had led to failure. The gender of the turtles is not determined by genetics, but by the temperature of the eggs during incubation.