Hello, I'm Tyler Mahard. I'm a wildlife conservationist and I'm raising funds to study and protect diamond-backed terrapins in Connecticut. What is a diamond-backed terrapin? Well, there are unique species of turtle found exclusively in coastal wetlands. They're important components of our salt marsh and estuary and ecosystems, but they've been declining throughout their geographic range over the past few decades. Along with habitat loss and nest predation, road mortality is a major threat to their survival. Like all turtles, terrapins lay eggs on land and often must cross roads to find suitable nesting habitat. This particular stretcher road in Fairfield County is a terrapin roadkill hotspot. I've been conducting weekly surveys here since May and I plan to continue through October pending the success of this project in May. Scattered remains of roadkill terrapins can be found all along this road and I've already documented several intact carcasses from this season. I'm also documenting other road-killed wildlife, turtle nests that have been dug up by predators, and occurrences of live terrapins. Data from these surveys are being shared with Connecticut Wildlife Division and affiliated institutions involved in terrapin conservation in Connecticut. Our main goal here is obviously to reduce terrapin roadkill and the information we get from these surveys will help us determine how to go about that most effectively. In other places, turtle road mortality has been reduced by its goal in turtle crossing science or specialized testing that keeps turtles out of busy roadways like this. You can see photos and read about the findings from my weekly surveys in the updates section of this project's website. Roadside litter is also a big problem here. This one mile stretcher road is adjacent to salt marsh and wildlife refuge and you can actually see litter floating around in the marsh in some places. This campaign will fund at least 15 hours of litter removal here but more importantly, I want to reduce littering here long term. To do this, I'm planning to create a report that quantifies and describes litter along this road. I've already reached out to Connecticut DOT regarding the need for a litter cleanup. I'll be sharing the report with them and any other organizations that might be interested in finding a long term solution. The report will also be posted on the project website. Last year, I was involved in a geospatial analysis that identified many potential road mortality locations for terrapins throughout coastal Connecticut. This campaign will fund at least 10 surveys at some of these locations. Results will also be shared with Connecticut Wildlife Division and affiliated institutions and on the project website. The discovery of any additional terrapin road mortality hotspots will be reported to the relevant officials and I'll advocate for mitigation action as needed. If we don't find any terrapins out of given site, that's still helpful information because it tells us more about the distribution of terrapin road mortality throughout Connecticut and it helps inform future spatial analyses. Funding from this campaign will cover costs of supplies, vehicle mileage, and enable me to spend 20 hours a week on this project. In addition to surveys in the field, this includes time in the office, managing data, conducting research, writing reports, communicating with various organizations, and managing this project's website and social media pages. Please consider making a contribution to this campaign if you're able to do so and please share this as success of crowdfunding depends on support from a large number of individuals. If you're interested, you can read through the GoFundMe page, check out our project website and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments and thanks for watching.