The BLCT has conducted research on Barrington’s population of Diamondback Terrapin since 1990. Terrapin are aquatic turtles that live in estuaries; adult females emerge each spring to lay eggs in the sandy soils adjacent to our tidal rivers. Barrington has the only numerically significant population of Terrapin in Rhode Island. Research activities include capturing and marking nesting females, monitoring nest success, and relocating selected nests to a predator-guarded hatching area.
The principal investigators, Charlotte Sornborger and Pete McCalmont, and a growing cohort of experts, volunteers and interns, have spent substantial amounts of time in the field, especially during the spring/summer nesting period. They have marked hundreds of different female terrapin, observed hundreds of hatchlings emerging from the protected hatching nests to the surrounding estuarine waters, and supervised research activities of many field assistants at the high school and college level.
Read a report of the 2016 field season
Bibliography of Terrapin Research 2013
Application For Terrapin Research Permit 2017
