The Other Island Turtle
Story and photos by Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D.

Nearly everyone that lives on or visits Amelia Island knows about the sea turtles that come here in the warmer months of the year. Signs on the beach protect sea turtle nests from disruption, and laws require beachside structures from shining lights that might disorient newly hatched turtles. And almost everyone has at one time or another seen a television documentary detailing the life cycle and threats to endangered sea turtles around the world. Sea turtles have a great public relations team, and it has helped them survive.

Not so, the gopher tortoise, a sea turtle relative. Even though gopher tortoises are visible here on Amelia Island year round, many people are unfamiliar with them. Some naïve people, trying to be helpful, have even been known to find a gopher tortoise on the beach and try to "return it to the sea".

The gopher tortoise has a heavy outer shell and
armored limbs designed withstand extreme heat.
___________________________

Believe me, this is no help to a tortoise adapted for near-desert conditions of sand dunes and pine flatlands, an animal that can no more swim in the ocean than it can fly in the air. Gopher tortoises are brick-like animals, with heavy shells and armored limbs designed to withstand extremes of heat while they forage in the hot sun for suitable plants, fruits and other vegetable matter to sustain them.

Gopher tortoises are found throughout the southeastern United States in areas that are undeveloped by humans, and that provide them with their needs of a variety of plant food items, and deep dry soil in which to construct their burrows. These attributes are the same ones humans prefer when building their own homes. Humans, of course, are winning out in this land grab, and gopher tortoises are declining throughout their native range. In Florida, gopher tortoises have recently been reclassified as a threatened species.

At least some gopher tortoises have found a safe haven on Amelia Island, living in protected sand dunes and the state parks that surround us. If you want to look for gopher tortoises, you can surely find them. One place to start looking is Fort Clinch State Park. Drive past the ranger station down the main park road for a couple of miles, then make a right-hand turn on the road headed toward the beach. Look for the post line on the left side of the road, and park your car. Walk behind the posts, and you will have entered the home range of a "pod" of gopher tortoises, as a group sharing the same area is called.

Maybe you won't see a gopher tortoise the first time you visit here, but you maximize your chances if you come often. Tortoises are most active when it is not too hot or too cold, so cooler summer mornings and evenings and warm winter mid-days are the most likely time to find them out and about.

The sand dunes along the beach are a great place to spot a gopher tortoise burrow.
____________________________________________________

Even if you don't see a tortoise, here in Fort Clinch State Park you will certainly see their homes. Gopher tortoises, like their namesake, gophers, dig deep holes in the ground where they spend much of their time. These burrows can be as deep as 50 feet or more below ground - as deep as it takes to reach the damp water table below the ground, key to the cooling effect of the burrows. Armadillos, foxes and other animals also make holes, or even modify abandoned gopher tortoise burrows for their own use, but you can always tell an active gopher tortoise burrow from something else. Gopher tortoises have a domed shaped carapace (upper shell), and the entrance to their burrow reflects this shape. You can often see an apron of sand in front of the burrow - sand the tortoise has excavated in its digging efforts. And, if you look closely, you might see tortoise tracks and well-established tortoise paths around the area leading to often visited plants in their home range.

You might also see other tracks here, too. The fact is that gopher tortoises are a "keystone species" that provide living spaces for other animals, too. Deep gopher tortoise burrows provide cool shade and humidity for scores of other creatures during the heat of summer days. Various snakes, frogs, mice, and insects found in the dry sandy areas preferred by gopher tortoises take shelter in these burrows even when the tortoise is in residence. And, in areas that sometimes catch fire, gopher tortoise burrows make a fine refuge to hide until the flames subside.

Usually, only one tortoise inhabits a burrow, although other tortoises may inhabit burrows that are nearby. On a warm spring day, though, when hormones are racing, a male tortoise just might take up temporary residence in the burrow of a willing female. After a short cohabitation, the male wanders home again, and the female digs a hole and lays her eggs in a sunny place where the heat incubates them unattended.

If you walk through a local pine forest or sandy area,
a gopher tortoise might cross your path.
__________________________

Sometimes a tortoise will hit the road and move from one burrow to another that it constructs or revisits up to five miles away from its former home. On Amelia Island in spring and summer, often tortoises are on the move. It is not unusual to see tortoises crossing busy roads oblivious to traffic in their path, as they head off towards remembered territory for a seasonal change of scenery and forage items. Sadly, though, many of these former feeding grounds, unbeknownst to the tortoises, since they last visited have turned into houses, concrete and inedible St. Augustine grass.

If you do see a tortoise crossing the road, give it a brake. Either stop your car - and others heading its way - until it safely crosses or, if this looks impossible, get out and carefully lift it up and take it in the direction it was headed, safely across the road. A tortoise has a memory and motivation to travel to a particular place and will continue to cross roads to get there. As you can imagine, many tortoises die in the process.

Despite these dangers, some gopher tortoises live out their full lifespan of up to 60 years here on Amelia Island. These survivors have seen more changes in their lifetime than most of us can imagine. Let's respect and admire these old-timers as more and more of us newcomers invade their world. Tortoises, like sea turtles, have lessons for us all.

Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D. is a zoologist and story teller on Amelia Island. Look for her weekly column, Wild Ways, in the Wednesday News-Leader.