Press Release: Blanding’s Turtles Released

RBG Returns 52 Endangered Blanding’s Turtles to Local Wetlands in Its Largest Release Since 2020

Hamilton, ON – September 1, 2026 – Royal Botanical Gardens’ (RBG’s) Species at Risk (SAR) Team has released 52 federally endangered, head-started Blanding’s Turtles, with a few showcased at Princess Point prior to their return to RBG wetlands. This is the highest number of head-started Blanding’s Turtles released since their partnership with Scales Nature Park began in 2020.

Head-started turtles spend their first two years in a rearing facility, allowing them to grow to a size that makes them less susceptible to predators and increases their chances of survival in the wild. RBG’s Blanding’s Turtle hatchlings were raised in a rearing facility at Scales Nature Park in Orillia, which houses, feeds, and monitors the turtles. In recent years, this program has increased the hatchlings’ body mass to up to eight times their size at hatching. Before being released, biologists at the Toronto Zoo insert PIT tags into the juvenile turtles to aid in future identification.

Blanding’s Turtles are provincially listed as threatened and federally listed as endangered. RBG’s Species at Risk team enacts the Turtle Recovery Plan, which includes surveys and monitoring, habitat improvement, radio telemetry (tracking), adult mortality mitigation, nest protection, and Blanding’s Turtle head-starting efforts to bring their population towards a sustainable level. The goal is to slow, stop, and reverse the decline of local Blanding’s Turtles, other turtle species, and the region’s biodiversity. In 2016, there was an estimated total of 20 to 25 Blanding’s Turtles in RBG’s wetlands; this year’s release brings that estimate to 99, with 13 known adults, five of which are breeding-aged females. The rest are juveniles.

“RBG uses radio telemetry to track the adult females so we can protect them and their eggs when they come up to land to nest. Thanks to these tracking efforts, in the last ten years, RBG’s Species at Risk team rescued five of our then-six known breeding-aged adult females from situations where they would have been injured or killed, so without our tracking efforts our local population would already be functionally extirpated,” says Sarah Richer, Species at Risk Senior Ecologist. “Unfortunately, one of our breeding-aged adult females, Carmen, was killed in June on Plains Road West in Burlington. Losing an adult female when there are already so few is a monumental loss to our population.”

Some head-started turtles released this year are Carmen’s offspring.

Wildlife roadkill mitigation fencing work in the area is conducted with various partner organizations and neighbouring landowners, including but not limited to the City of Hamilton, City of Burlington, Hamilton Conservation Authority, Hydro One, and volunteer group Dundas Turtle Watch; however, there is still work to do.

Financial support from RBG donors and the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation enables RBG to dramatically increase the chances of survival for these turtles through the above conservation efforts.

To learn more about turtle conservation at RBG, visit rbg.ca/turtles.