2024 marked the 10th year the words Turtles Kingston have been used in some capacity and 6 years that it has been functioning as an education and advocacy grassroots group. With every passing year we endeavour to share knowledge and resources to help community members take action! Our efforts and initiatives this year are summarized below based on our programs: education program, nesting program, trauma program, science program, advocacy program, as well as other initiatives.

The Turtles Kingston Team and Organization

*Our assistant director and trauma program coordinator Adrian at Turtle Awareness day*

Our Turtles Kingston team is always hard at work. This year our team was smaller than previous years as we had a couple coordinators step back from their volunteer positions. From the work of Adrian (Assistant Director and Trauma Program Coordinator), Lesley (Science Program Coordinator), Rachel (Information Coordinator), Crystal (Design Coordinator), and our director Tara (who also filled the positions of Education Coordinator, Nesting Program Coordinator, Advocacy Coordinator, while helping other programs as well) we were still able to accomplish a lot in 2024.

As 2024 comes to a close we have said thank you and good by to Rachel and Hello to Alex who will be joining us as a social media coordinator in 2025. With no information coordinator in 2025 to help write our monthly blog posts we are looking to others in the community to help us by guest writing blog posts on various topics we have been wanting to explore further.

Education Program

Outreach and Knowledge Dissemination

Sharing knowledge and empowering others to take action to help turtles is a main goal of Turtles Kingston. We accomplish this through several avenues including our annual Turtle Awareness Day. This year Turtle Awareness Day was held on June 1 at Confederation Basin in downtown Kingston. Prior to this public event we held two Turtle Lover workshops for those interested in a deep dive into learning about our local turtles. These workshops were hosted out of Potter’s Nurseries with 12 people (8 adults and 4 kids) now joining the ranks of officially trained turtle warriors.

*Trinette and Tara at MOVE 98.3 after recording Tuesday Turtle Talk*

Each year we also take the opportunity to talk with different media platforms to reach various audiences about turtle topics. This year we were excited to start a weekly Tuesday Turtle Talk with Trinette from MOVE 98.3 - you can listen to the audio clips here. Over the course of 8 months we covered topics from how to identify different turtles to road mitigation and from nesting to pet turtles on this local radio station.

We were also interviewed on three separate occasions for TV (Global News and YourTV) regarding our upcoming turtle awareness day, about local construction at 10 Cataraqui St (see Advocacy below), and about a speed limit reduction in a known turtle mortality hotspot near Glenburnie. We were also offered the opportunity by YourTV to film a turtle PSA that was played in the autumn along size hockey games (see video below).

It is the interactive presentations and turtle trial activities that we find have the most impact and help share the best knowledge. This year we partnered with blue marble learning scene again to offer our Turtle Trials activity for its third year. They were able to facilitate 14 activities to various school classrooms and organizations for over 300 young turtle warriors trained. We also facilitated 6 turtle information sessions (~110 people) for groups like beyond the classroom (a grade 7/8 class), a high school tech class, QUBS eco adventure camp, embers groups, OHIP staff, and residents of an apartment building.

*Our new turtle poster for presentations and booths*

This year we were approached by two groups of Queens University students completing a conservation biology course to provide insight and support on their project to actually complete a useful conservation project. One of these projects involved supporting a student informational turtle booth on campus and the other supported the creation of two information handouts the students planned to send to city council members and veterinary clinics.

With fewer coordinators on the turtle team this year we did not attend as many booths as we typically would throughout the year. Aside from our Turtle Awareness Day we only set up one informational booth at the Earth Day Earth Songs Concert with Contabile Choirs.

Our focus for education behind the scene was the creation of free informational handouts that can now be found on our website. New this year included our handout about ‘how to help turtles’, ‘turtle nest protectors’, ‘ how to move a turtle’, ‘turtles and construction’ and our ‘turtle identification sheet’. We also added laminated copies of the ‘turtle identification sheet’ with a ‘how to move a turtle’ on the back to our turtle store.

With a new design coordinator (Crystal) we were also able to finally add a big turtle poster to our resources for presentations and booths. Plus, create many informational posters for our downtown monitoring site.

Social Media

Besides in person talks and activities our main educational efforts are via social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram where we have 5,700 and 982 followers respectively. These communities continue to grow each year and this year we welcomed an additional 348 to Facebook and 221 to Instagram. Our content reach goes beyond our followers as they share our posts with 858,500 accounts reached on Facebook and 12,300 on Instagram. All this exposure was from 353 different posts (284 on Instagram). Again this year, our primary post that received the most exposure and engagement was our ‘don’t straddle a turtle’ post that went viral in 2023 - reached 566,300 accounts, had 4,300 reactions, 140 comments, and 8000 shares. We’ve highlighted our posts below that reached the most people.

Roads and turtles

Nesting turtle mothers

Busting myths

How to move a snapping turtle

How do you install a turtle nest protector

Our social media content this year was renewed with beautiful photos of turtles thanks to our Turtle Warrior Community. On March 1, 2024 we asked for photos of turtles to be shared with us. We had more than 35 individuals provide us with over 300 photos.

Website: Is a way we consistently provide information and resources about turtles. This year our website received 16,000 visits (14,000 unique visitors) and 21,000 page views. Our website traffic peaks in May and June then again with a smaller increase in September. The rest of the year traffic to our website is fairly consistent at just under 1000 visits each month.

Most people find our website via internet searches (64.2% of visits) and directly (26%), while our social media content only drives 8.7% of our website traffic. Although we are a Kingston, Ontario based group, our website reach is wider with most of our visitors from America (48.3%) and 39.5% of visitors from Canada. We also receive visitors to our website from India, Australia, the UK, Germany, and France to name a few.

Answering questions: In 2024, we helped answer questions from the community about turtles. In total we answered 110 inquires (53 from social media messages and 57 from emails)

Finally, our Turtles Kingston Membership grew from 173 to 229 members. These members receive monthly emails about turtles and opportunities to volunteer.

Nesting Program

This year we didn’t have a dedicated nesting program coordinator, but thanks to the help of returning and new volunteers we easily built 78 more nest protectors to add to our stock for a total of 107 available for the 2024 season. In fact, this was too many nest protectors! Our returning volunteers Kate and Craig agreed to help us store the 20 nest protectors that they made - these will help us jump start our 2025 season and they are set to make us another 20! We also were able to use the 11 nest protectors built by Trinette and her family for our downtown Kingston monitoring program.

*Some of the students from Sydenham High School who built 22 nest protectors for us.*

It was nest protectors built by a wood shop class at Sydenham High School under the guidance of Mr. Odho (22 nest protectors) and those built at our nest protector building workshop in partnership with Thousand Islands National Park (25 nest protectors) that supplied the majority of the community nest protectors this year.

We were able to reduce the price of our nest protectors from $25 to $20 thanks to the donation of materials by Thousand Islands National Park for the 25 nest protectors built at our workshop! These nest protectors were built by the 23 attendees at our workshop on April 28 who actually built 37 nest protectors, 12 of which were either donated to CRCA or taken home with the attendees.

Materials for the other 52 nest protectors were purchased using funds from the 2023 program as well as through donations obtained by Kate and Craig (monetary and a donation of mesh from Atkinson Home Hardware), and pallet donations from McKegney Contracting, Kingston Harley-Davidson MotoSport Plus, and Ryan F, which were they taken apart and repurposed by Kate, Craig, and Trinette.

Potter’s Nurseries sold our nest protectors again this year and sold out of the 15 they had in stock within the first 4 days of nesting season starting. This year nesting season started even earlier than normal with the first nesting turtle we observed on May 26. In total, Potter’s distributed 30 nest protectors and an additional 10 sold directly out of our Turtle Store.

Trauma Program

In 2024, our first injured turtle was brought into the trauma program on May 7, one day earlier than the year before, and the last turtle was brought in on September 26. In total the trauma program brought in 18 injured turtles, 11 from outside Kingston and 7 from within the city. Of these turtles 6 were snapping turtles, 5 were painted turtles, 2 were map turtles, 1 was a Blanding’s turtle and 4 were unidentified. Unlike previous years, we didn’t have any days with multiple injured turtles brought into the program.

Less turtles were brought into the trauma program in 2024 than in 2023, which was less than in 2022. We know that there are still many turtles being injured as the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre and Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre continue to receive record numbers for rehabilitation. The fact that they are not coming through our turtle trauma response program may mean we need to evaluate more closely how our program supports the community. We hope that our continued education means that many turtles are going directing to Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre as a result of our efforts, even if not through our trauma program.

This trauma program is supported by our 8 veterinary clinics. This year we provided each vet with a new poster to help raise awareness for the trauma program and provide an easier method of accessing the intake form when injured turtles are brought to their location.

Turtles Kingston’s programs, such as our trauma response program, do not provide hands on support within the community for turtles. However, this year we had an inquire about a turtle stuck inside the outflow of a stormwater management pond for several days. This provided a unique situation that we did respond to in order to evaluate and request appropriate support from the city of Kingston. This turtle was rescued thanks to help from Matt at the city of Kingston, brought to Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre, then immediately released back into the wild as it was uninjured (see images below).

Science Programs

*A volunteer installing a turtle nest protector box after watching a map turtle complete nesting in our downtown monitoring site.*

Our science programs consists of two separate programs: Turtle Monitoring Program and Nest Rescue Program. We hope to expand our science programs to turtle egg incubation at some point but at this time we have not been able to obtain appropriate permits to become an incubation facility. It seems that the most likely method for us to be able to contribute to turtle egg incubation is under the permits of a different organization. For now, we have put advancing this future program on hold until we are officially a registered Charity (in the works).

Our Turtle Monitoring Program occurs at a downtown Kingston site and was a success again in 2024. This year we were able to cover 63 turtle nests thanks to 14 volunteers. That’s a total of 190 turtle nests protected through the monitoring program between 2022 and 2024.

Volunteer turtle monitors were asked to walk the site at least once a week for 2 hours from the last week of May to the first week of July. Overall our volunteers contributed 147.62 hours of monitoring over 71 shifts. During these monitoring shifts 228 turtle sightings were recorded of at least 81 unique turtles (identified from scientific study markings).

This year our monitoring program also included monitoring and protecting turtle nests on human-made alternative nesting sites that were placed around an upcoming construction site (see advocacy for more details).

The turtle Nest Rescue Program had its second year of operation in 2024. This program has a goal to provide information and resources for the community to access if they believed a turtle nest was at risk of being destroyed. The program starts with individuals contacting Turtles Kingston with their concerns. If the turtle nest is determine to be in a location where it is likely to be destroyed and the threatening activities cannot be halted, Turtles Kingston would work with the individual and landowner to obtain appropriate permits for extracting the nest for incubation at Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre.

In 2024, we were able to successfully extract 2 map turtle nests that were at risk of being destroyed by construction activities. This was done at the beginning of September, late into the turtle incubation period. In fact, many of the eggs extracted were in the process of hatching. Typically this late in the season we wouldn’t extract nests and instead get construction to be postponed until after November. However, since these were map turtle nests, which typically hatch but then overwinter in the nest, we needed to extract the hatchlings and send them to Sandy Pines to spend the winter. From the two nests we extracted 17 eggs.

Advocacy Program

There are several ongoing advocacy projects we continued to be involved with in 2024.

After our efforts in 2023 working with the city of Kingston to identify locations for turtle crossing signs they successfully installed crossing signs at 5 additional locations around the city. We have all the South Frontenac data submitted to our turtle crossing form from 2023 but did not get the opportunity in 2024 to synthesize this information and present it to the township.

The Kingston Inner Harbour Sediment Management plan project continues to work on their Detailed Impact Assessment (DIA), which we are waiting to review. This year, part of that work included radio telemetry studies on turtles in the Kingston Inner Harbour in order to provide direct evidence of what areas turtles are using as overwintering habitat. We met with the KIH project team in August to discuss turtles and our expert knowledge of turtles in the Kingston Inner Harbour area. We were able to share with them our maps of turtle observations on roads and turtle nests protected as part of our monitoring program. We are still waiting to review their DIA, which was suppose to be ready this autumn.

The 9 North St. project had permanent fencing installed at the end of 2023 to keep nesting turtles out of the construction site. With a new contact for this project we were able to get ahead of any turtle issues and worked with them to arrange fencing around an additional section of the site that would prevent nesting mothers from entering but allow hatchings to exit. As the community wasn’t aware of what these odd looking fences were for there was some vandalism that provided us the opportunity to create signage for education purposes.

The 10 Cataraqui St project got a lot of public attention this year. People are concerned about the project and its impact on turtles and the environment. We are thankful to City Flats that they reached out to us so early in the project and continue to make changes based on our recommendations for protecting turtles. These turtle protection initiatives involved installing permanent fencing around the construction site at least one year prior to any work being done, and alternative nesting mounding being placed around the construction site to compensate for nesting sites turtles were either excluded from or that were made more difficult to access.

*Northern map turtles using the alternative nesting mounds*

Question and Answer: You may be wondering if our working with the construction companies at 9 North St. and 10 Cataraqui St mean we endorse or support these construction projects. The simple answer is no. Our goal at Turtles Kingston is to advocate for turtles in all areas of human activity. Sometimes this means completely opposing a development project and other times it means working with a development project to reduce its impacts on our local turtle populations. Just because we are working to reduce impacts to turtles does not mean we endorse or support any particular project. What it means is that we understand that many aspects of human activities are out of our hands and some construction / maintenance projects will go ahead weather we like it or not. We choose which projects to fight, which projects to push to be better, and which projects to cooperatively work with. We are thankful that the companies at these two sites are willing to work with us in protecting turtles.

In addition to the above ongoing projects we were approached by community members on two other concerns. In April a concerned community member and Turtle Warrior brought up the issue of turtle death and injury along Cataraqui Woods Drive near Princess St. This is an area we were aware of but the additional details provided by Nikkoel allowed us to formulate a plan that we brought to the City of Kingston.

*Image of curb cuts after they were completed in July 2024 on Cataraqui Woods Drive.*

The issue at this site is that turtles regularly cross the road from the adjacent Provincially Significant Wetland to a stormwater management pond. However, the road has large curbs that make it difficult for smaller turtles and turtle hatchlings to exit the road. This road is a connector road directing a significant amount of traffic through the city and the curbs are there for stormwater management purposes, it also already supports turtle crossing signs and because of its road status would not qualify for a speed reduction or speed humps at this time. We were able to meet on site to discuss the issues and propose a solution of curb cuts to help provide exits to turtles that get trapped on the road. These curb cuts were installed just 3 months later thanks to staff from Public Works and Engineering Services at the City of Kingston.

The second issue brought up by a community member in May was related to construction fencing that was not removed along a section of the K&P Trail that transects a wetland. This was resulting in wildlife movement issues and needed to be dealt with imminently else it impact turtle nesting. Through communications with the city of Kingston the silt fencing was removed.

Thankfully we find the city of Kingston very receptive to turtle protection initiatives. Our staff contact Matt is great at providing guidance, bringing forward thoughts and concerns, and redirecting issues internally. Where individual community members cannot get a response or action from the city we have the means to help. Beyond these two concerns, we discussed maintenance of alternative turtle nesting mounds with the city to see if there was an opportunity for Turtles Kingston to assist in these efforts moving forward. At this time we are not able to provide support but will look to expand our programming in this area in the future. For now, one of the great Turtle Warriors in our community, James, is helping the city maintain several turtle nesting mounds.

We were also approached by the city to discussed work that was going to be completed in Doug Fluhrer park to ensure all steps were taken to protect turtles and what to do if any turtles were found.

Finally, we were approached by Utilities Kingston about work they were having done at one of their sites. This was a location they have witnessed and even internally protected turtle nests so they wanted to ensure the maintenance work did not impact those existing or future nests.

We appreciate all the Turtle Warriors out there who are our eyes and ears where we don’t have them. Please send us your questions and concerns so we can help to take appropriate action or provide useful information. We especially appreciate when we are contacted by the organizations completing the work as it makes protecting turtles that much easier knowing changes are willing to be made.

Other Successes and Financial Summary

We have many programs at Turtles Kingston, but there are even more things we do that don’t fall neatly into one of these programs. Some of these other accomplishments from 2024 include: 55 submissions to our Road Observations Form; 36 orders from our Turtle Store (not including orders in December); our first turtle art gallery and auction; launch of our new symbolic turtle adoption package; and putting together an educational video for a turtle song by local musician Margaret Moncrieff.

This was our third year collecting turtle observations from those within the community to help us get an understanding of where turtles are on roads. This community science initiative is meant to help us target our next advocacy efforts, provide evidence to support our advocacy efforts, and in general help us understand the turtle populations within our community. This year we received 55 submissions from our website. Of these submissions, 27 were alive and uninjured, 9 dead, 18 were nesting, and 1 was injured. Each of the 5 turtle species found in the Kingston area were observed and reported on our form.

Through our Turtle Store we offer resources to help people protect and learn about turtles including bumper stickers (also available from a variety of local shops for FREE), turtle crossing lawn signs, turtle nest protectors, car magnets, reptile handbooks, greeting cards, and identification sheets (NEW). In 2024, we had 36 orders that contained 74 items (20 orders that were mailed): 5 lawn signs, 10 packs of bumper stickers, 10 nest protector, 19 car magnets, 8 handbooks, 7 packs of greeting cards, and 15 ID sheets.

This year we also added symbolic turtle adoption packages that include info sheet about your turtle, a certificate of adoption, an identification sheet, a bumper sticker and car magnet, and 3 greeting cards. There are also a limited number of custom clay creations that are available as an add on for those that adopt a turtle. To support this additional item in our turtle store we upgraded our website so that purchases can be made directly online instead of via our google form and e-tranfer system.

Please note, the numbers provided here and in the entire 2024 annual report do not include December 2024.

We are continuing to work with the Queens Law Clinic to become a registered Charity and have had discussions with a new Turtle Group in Cornwall - SGD Turtles - to help answer their questions as they start the journey of creating their own conservation organization.

The last two years we’ve had an annual silent auction fundraiser. In 2023, 13 of the donated items were custom art pieces that inspired us to do an art auction and gallery fundraiser this year. We started our call out for art in March and received a total of 39 art pieces submitted by 25 different artists. The art gallery was held for a week in September at the Window Art Gallery. 24 of the 39 art pieces were sold in the auction for a total of $2040. Of this profit, Turtles Kingston got $1330 and $710 went back to the artists as we had offered to split profits with artists 50-50. We are thankful to all artists who participated and the 12 artists who donated their portion of the profits back to Turtles Kingston.

Financial Summary

This year Turtles Kingston received two grants. One from Trailhead ($2203.50) for purchasing a realistic snapping turtle model from Hockley Studios and one from Thousand Islands National Park ($4000) to support various aspects of our programming. We will be using the Thousand Islands National Park Grant to purchase two additional turtle models, put together turtle warrior car kits to give away to the community, order custom turtle warrior safety vests, restock our dwindling ‘I brake for turtles’ bumper sticker supply (we ran out of bumper stickers in December meaning there are a total of 19,000 bumper stickers out in the world), and purchase files for 3D printing our Ontario turtles.

As of December 1 we have 5 turtle model files in hand and thanks to the support of our community we have 3 groups of people helping us print them! We will then reach out to our community again to help get them painted and ready for the 2025 turtle season!

Other financial support was obtained through the offering of our turtle trials activity which brought in $210. A donation of $174 from Daughters General Store and the Coffee Plant was provided from their annual turtle fundraiser (third year in a row). We received a total of $644.87 in donations from individuals made during our turtle awareness day (donations as part of the turtle lover workshop), booths and events we had, and 4 donations via our donor box platform. Sale of our turtle conservation items from our online store and Potter’s nurseries brought in ~$1,657 as of the beginning of December 2024.

Our expenses for Turtles Kingston include subscriptions (~$500 for our website, text-em-all, and google storage), accounting fees for our bank (~$66), insurance (~$1400), purchase of items we sell (~$200), running our programs (~$500), printing and office supplies (~$500), shipping (~$150) and volunteer appreciation / team building (~$150).

Our turtle team worked really hard this year and our financial budget allowed us to provide a small honorarium ($2000 total) to three of our coordinators (Tara, Director; Adrian, assistant director and trauma program coordinator; Lesley, science program coordinator) who have been part of the organization since 2021/2022.

Thank you to everyone who supported our efforts this year, for everyone who helped a turtle cross a road, for everyone who supports our Turtles Kingston bumper stickers and car magnets, and to all the turtle warriors out there! We could not do any of this without you.

2024 Turtles Kingston Annual Report