FWP officials ban red-eared slider turtles

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BILLINGS Heres a national issue in which Montana has raced out in front of the pack: turtles.

State Fish Wildlife and Park officials have concluded there is no room under the Big Sky for red-eared slider turtles, the kind that have been popular in pet shops for decades. Turns out the turtles willingness to eat just about anything makes it highly competitive with native species when owners with buyers remorse release the hard-shelled pet into the wild.

Red-eared sliders are on the list of the 100 most invasive species in the world, said Allison Begley of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Theyre omnivores. They eat anything, and they adapt to any habitat.

Red-eared sliders, which get their name from the red markings on the sides of their heads, have been found in Riverfront Park in Billings, the Lee Metcalf Wilderness and Spring Meadow State Park in Helena, according to FWP. The turtles often get dumped in the fall by owners with second thoughts about keeping a turtle around in a basement or garage during the winter.

Now that the reptiles are verboten, animal advocates like Dave Pauli, a Humane Society wildlife capture and field project specialist, are concerned even more turtles will be released.

But Pauli has a plan. Hes going to load up a trailer with as many red-eared sliders as Montanans will offer and drive the turtles to a Texas lake, where the turtles are native. He said he will make his turtle trip to Texas in October.

The unique thing about his project, besides giving people the opportunity to turn in turtles, is that it gives a bunch of the turtles the chance to be released into a large lake in Texas, Burro Lake.

The lake is on a wildlife sanctuary created for relocated Grand Canyon burros. Paulis trip is no pedal-to-the-metal exercise. Turtles take time. The ones Pauli receives will spend weeks in large ponds in Montana getting used to catching food, diving deep and swimming beyond the glass walls of an aquarium.

A turtle that has lived in shallow water in a short glass tank doesnt know how to manage the sink-or-swim pond life. Pauli said the animals will be tested to see which are fit for release and which continue to need looking after.

Thursday, Pauli was working with a red-eared slider that was swimming the length of a pool 25 feet long. That turtle will be joined by other turtles submitted during the one-time, red-eared slider turtle turn-in program.

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FWP officials ban red-eared slider turtles

Expedition 40 Crew Bids Farewell, Undocks and Safely Lands in Kazakhstan – Video

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Expedition 40 Crew Bids Farewell, Undocks and Safely Lands in Kazakhstan
xpedition 40 Commander Steve Swanson of NASA and Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev of the Russian Federal Space Agency landed safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the...

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NASA’s Richard Cohen – 3rd Talk, Conspiracies, Lies, Jack Parsons – Video

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NASA Defends Science Plan for Mars Rover Curiosity

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PASADENA, Calif. NASA is staunchly defending the science plans for its flagship Mars rover Curiosity in the wake of a recent senior-level review that at times harshly criticized the mission's science operations.

Mission scientists announced Thursday (Sept. 11) that the car-size Curiosity rover has reached the base of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain rising from the center of the rover's Gale Crater landing site. Curiosity had been driving toward the mountain since it landed on Mars in 2012.

NASA officials lauded the success so far of Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission. However, they also responded to criticism raised in the recent NASA Planetary Senior Review Panel report, which NASA commissioned to help allocate financial resources for seven planetary missions, including Curiosity's Mars exploration. [Biggest Mars Discoveries by Curiosity So Far]

Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, was quick to point out Curiosity's early success, citing the rover's discovery that Mars was once a habitable world in the ancient past a key mission goal. The rover landed in August 2012 to begin a two-year primary mission.

"It immediately hit the jackpot," Green said with enthusiasm during the news conference here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Curiosity explored Yellowknife Bay and found that it was in an ancient lake-bed environment that several billion years ago offered fresh water and all the key ingredients for life and a chemical source for microbes, if indeed any existed at that time."

But the NASA-commissioned report was less enthusiastic. The NASA Planetary Senior Review Panel, chaired by Clive Neal of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, gave Curiosity's Mars Science Laboratory mission low marks for scientific return, placing the rover toward the bottom of the seven missions under review.

While all seven missions were ultimately approved for ongoing funding, the panel was not upbeat about Curiosity's prospects during the mission extension. The panel stated that the recently released plan for the next two years of Curiosity's operations on Mars "lacked specific scientific questions and testable hypotheses," and suggested that the mission should do more drilling and less driving to justify the continued funding of $59 million.

The panel's report also pointed out that the team intended to drill just eight samples in the upcoming funding period a plan that "the panel considered a poor science return for such a large investment." [Curiosity Quiz: Test Your Mars Rover Smarts]

The report went on to be specifically critical of Curiosity rover project scientist John Grotzinger, complaining that he was present only by phone for one round of discussion, and sent a deputy to respond to the next. "This left the panel with the impression that they were too big to fail," the report added.

Green responded to the latter comment by pointing out that Grotzinger had discussed the situation in advance with NASA management.

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NASA Defends Science Plan for Mars Rover Curiosity

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