Our research philosophy is to look after the turtles here and ensure their safe future. The first main goal of the project is to understand and protect the turtles living in the
Blue Heron Nature Preserve (BHNP) by studying their demographics, sex ratios, seasonal habits, movement, interactions, and behavior.
We’ve already documented 81 unique individual turtles living in the preserve of five different species and we know there are many more out there!

The other main goal is to train students in the
Conservation Research Bridge Program in wildlife biology and conservation. This long term field-based research project was started in 2019 through a collaborative grant between the BHNP and the Amphibian Foundation (AF). The project picked up steam in the summer of 2020 with the launch of our Conservation Research Bridge Program where the program's co-founder, Dr. Tobias Landberg, worked with our second Bridge Program student, Jack Martin.
The program now continues with the next wave of students taking over the study.