August days silently slip away leaving summer’s glory in their wake. Leafy canopies that provided beauty and shade through the season now announce autumn’s arrival with hints of red and gold. It’s comforting to cling to summer’s sweet hours of swims, hikes, boating, barbecues and bonfires.
But my thoughts retreat to summer’s start. It was early June. Wild daisies and buttercups waved their faces to the skies flagging the snapping turtles’ destiny to bring forth a new generation. Over a two-week period, during my daily comings and goings, I witnessed mama turtles preserving their species, the life-giving ritual snappers perpetuated for millions of years.
The car window provided passing glimpses of these prehistoric reptiles whose predecessors walked side-by-side with dinosaurs and who survived the dinosaur’s mass extinction. Native to Michigan wetlands, these common snapping turtles sport a spiked shell the size of a dinner plate and a spiked tail. It’s not a stretch to imagine them crawling alongside a stegosaurus.
My snappers had a different fate. In search of nesting sites, they crawled across road pavement staring down trucks and SUVs. I didn’t know whether to rejoice in the snappers’ ability to prevail over asphalt and speeding vehicles, or to feel heartbroken that millions of years brought them to this unnatural situation.
The news of species extinction comes at us from all directions. It can seem distant and easy to ignore. Yet what I saw from my Chevy window was very real and personal. I observed two mamas smashed by vehicles. Two others laid eggs in nests dug in the road shoulder’s soft sand. One nest was emptied by predators.
Snappers somehow traveled through time when dinosaurs lost the battle. Will they survive humankind? What hope can we hang their future on?
The 2022 United Nations biodiversity conference engaged 100 countries, including the United States, in a pledge to protect at least 30 percent of the planet’s land and water by 2030.
Michigan Department of Natural Resources spearheads the Michigan response.
According to The Nature Conservancy, Michigan private and public lands cover 24 percent of land area and 19 percent of the Great Lakes within Michigan’s jurisdiction. Grand Traverse County has shielded 30 percent of its land and waters land and waters.
Benzie, Leelanau and Kalkaska counties have protected more than 30 percent and Antrim 10 to 20 percent.
While northern Michigan for the most part meets the global 30 percent protection goal, some environmentalists question whether 30 percent is good enough to sustain biodiversity and a healthy planet. If my snappers could talk, I have no doubt they would plead for better, bolder and more meaningful protections.
Snappers may not be the cutest or most lovable wild creatures, but they deserve a future.