Asking why turtles try to cross the newly constructed Route 522 highway bypass in Mount Union seems like the setup to an obscure joke, but thanks to research by a team of Juniata College scientists, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, hundreds of turtles are being saved from a fate as roadkill. The new bypass had been built on a huge pile of coal slag and the turtles had been using this area as their nesting site.
Map turtles are large, river-dwelling reptiles about the size of a dinner plate.
Although there are about 12 species of map turtles that range from southern states to Canada, one of the few map turtle populations found in Pennsylvania is within the Susquehanna River drainage, a watershed system that includes the Juniata River. Juniata also hired students to monitor the area during the spring and summer of 2000. Juniata students Clayton Lutz, a junior from Altoona, and Tim Enedy, a senior from Portage, spent the year observing and monitoring the map turtle nesting site. Juniata College and PennDOT District 9 recently received the 2001 Pennsylvania Quality Initiative Environmental Award, which is given to organizations involved in outstanding transportation projects in Pennsylvania, for their work on the turtle project. Two of the turtles wearing transmitters stayed within four miles of the nesting site and one returned to the Mount Union site.