University efforts to save the diamondback terrapin – whose population is dwindling in Maryland – have significantly decreased since last year.
This year, the university will donate $1,000 to the Terrapin Institute, a local charity dedicated to the conservation of the terrapins. The donation is a sharp drop from last year’s donation of $6,000, said Marguerite Whilden, the founder and codirector of the institute.
“An organization that big that is sending only $1,000 is more of an insult than a help,” said Edward Wilson, a volunteer at the institute. “The University of Maryland has more to lose than anyone.”
Provost Bill Destler and Brian Darmody, the assistant vice president for research and economic development, did not know how much money the university was donating to the institute to this year, and could not explain why there had been a dropoff.
While Darmody said the university supports helping the turtles, Whilden said there has been a lack of interest from the university in the issue.
“You’re the first one to call me,” Whilden told this reporter, who was the first person to contact her from the university this year.
While the university’s interest in supporting their real-live mascots wanes, a delegate in the general assembly will propose a bill this week that would prohibit commercial harvesting of the diamondback terrapin until the species can revitalize itself.
The bill, which would take effect Oct. 1, should come before the General Assembly later this spring.
Maryland State Delegate Virginia Clagett, who proposed the bill, said she wants to spark debate on “a resource that we can’t lose.”
Whilden’s efforts on the part of the terrapin have garnered attention from the press and from the government. Last year, she began working with Clagett to create a Diamondback Terrapin Day through a bill in the legislature. Although that bill failed, Clagett expects a similar version to pass easily this year.
“It will establish a commemorative day on May 13,” Clagett said.
Over the past few years, the university has tried to help the terrapins’ cause by donating money earned through merchandise sold with the “Fear the Turtle” logo. Although legal fees caused by a court battle over the rights to the phrase restricted the amount the university gave in the past, the struggle in court recently ended.
“We recently perfected ‘Fear the Turtle,'” Darmody said, but despite the ending of the legal struggle, the sum donated to Whilden shrank significantly.
Through the “Fear the Turtle” fund, Darmody said the university hopes to help fund a variety of projects aside from Whilden’s. Among others, the university has in the past funded students to work on the issue.
“They’ve been involved in hands-on restoring of beaches,” said Bill Higgins, a professor in the biology department. “They’ve done some surveying when they go around.”
Whilden founded the Terrapin Institute after retiring from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Since then, she has sought funding from a variety of sources, including the university. According to Wilson, the institute has 12 volunteers and a budget of about $15,000.
One of Whilden’s solutions has been to buy some of the turtles from sea food dealers on the open market. After buying them, she tags them and releases them back into the wild, only to see terrapins with her tags reappear on the market.
“I spent $16,000 last year alone,” Whilden said. “And they still took them after I tagged them.”
While Whilden works to get funding, biologists at the U.S. Geological Survey are wrapping up a study begun in 2003 to survey the terrapin population, including a counting of the colony around Smith Island. The team looked at a variety of factors affecting terrapins, including the harvesting of adult females.
Female terrapins are larger than the males, meaning that, due to size regulations, most terrapins harvested are females.
“The harvesting is poorly surveyed and monitored,” said Mike Haramis, a research wildlife biologist at USGS. “You cannot sustain a population when you harvest the adult females.”
The task of surveying the harvest falls to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
“DNR has regulatory authority to monitor all Maryland fisheries,” said Chuck Gates, a DNR spokesman. “We propose catch limits and size limits.”
However, Whilden said no catch limits currently exist, meaning watermen, the people who harvest the terrapins, may catch as many as they can during the nine-month open season. According to Haramis, that could amount to several hundred turtles per day.
With each successive obstacle she has faced, Whilden has gotten more and more aggravated with the lack of support for the turtles.
“We have all these other serious tragedies – people dying of cancer, people dying in Iraq – that we have no control over,” Whilden said. “It’s been a very frustrating thing because it’s so simple.”
To find out more about the Terrapin Institute and their efforts to save the endangered state reptile and university mascot, or to learn more about donating or volunteering, visit
www.terrapininstitute.org
Contact reporter Jeff Amoros at amorosdbk@gmail.com.
