Pamela Meier, a turtle rehabilitator and owner of The Turtles Back, along with a group of volunteers, releases snapping turtle hatchlings into the Pemaquid River on Sept. 13. Meier excavated over 150 eggs from three nests near Hatchtown Bridge in Bristol in June and inclubated them in her home before releasing them. (Photo courtesy Graham Walsh)
A local wildlife rehabilitator and a small group of volunteers recently released over 100 baby snapping turtles into the Pemaquid River in Bristol, the result of a month’s long rescue effort that began when nearby construction threatened their nests.
The turtles’ eggs were salvaged earlier this year from a nesting site on Hatchtown Bridge in June, after a passerby, Graham Walsh alerted Pam Meier about a snapping turtle laying eggs near the bridge, which was slated for construction.
“He sent me a photo of her nesting,” said Meier, founder of The Turtle’s Back Inc. “Since they were going to start construction on the bridge, I excavated the nests and brought the eggs home to incubate.”
Meier, who previously worked in Connecticut, as, at the time, the only dedicated turtle rehabilitator, has focused exclusively on turtle rescue for over a decade. After moving to Maine in 2023, she began responding to local cases involving snapping and painted turtles, species that are not listed as endangered but still vulnerable to habitat disruption and road mortality, according to Meier.
Meier said she rescued about 150 eggs from the bridge, which she placed in containers for incubation. The hatchlings were kept for a week or more, depending on how long it took them to absorb their yolk sacs, a natural process that provides early nourishment before young turtles can feed on their own, according to Meier.
“They would normally, in the wild, emerge from their nest once that’s absorbed,” Meier said. “I always keep hatchlings for at least a week. Some of these, I had to keep quite a bit longer.”
On Sept. 13, Meier, Walsh and several neighbors released the hatchlings slightly downstream of the bridge to a quieter stretch of the river on private property.
“It was a really good place to release them, nice and slow, full of plants,” Meier said. “When you release hatchling turtles, you have to do it somewhere shallow because they’re not great swimmers at first and need places to hide.”
Meier said that several onlookers became a part of the baby turtle release.
“There were people just out walking their dogs who stopped to help,” she said. “Everybody took a few hatchlings and got to release them. We ended up saving a lot of the eggs that would have been destroyed.
A second, smaller release took place on Oct. 2 at Beaver Pond for hatchlings that had taken longer to develop.
Meier said she hopes the release of the hatchlings can raise awareness about Maine’s native turtles.
“Most turtles are listed species,” she said. “They are one animal that really needs help.”
For more information, go to theturtlesback.org or call 203-903-2708.
