Abstract
Water management practices in tidal marshes of the San Francisco Bay Estuary, California are often aimed at increasing suitable habitat for threatened fish species and sport fishes. However, little is known about how best to manage habitat for other sensitive status species like the semiaquatic freshwater Western Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata) that is declining throughout much of its range. Here, we examined the basking activity, abundance, survival, and growth of Western Pond Turtles at two brackish water study sites in Suisun Marsh, California that differed in how they were managed, with one having passive management (i.e., no active water regulation) and another having active management (i.e., water regulated for seasonal hunting). Our results revealed that basking activity was greatest when salinity, water stage, and air temperatures were low, shortwave radiation was high, and wind levels were intermediate. These preferred habitat characteristics often reflected conditions that were naturally maintained at the passively managed, muted tidal site. We also found that turtles were more abundant and had higher survival rates in the passively managed habitat compared to the actively managed habitat (201–323 turtles/km2 and 96% survival versus 11–135 turtles/km2 and 77% survival, respectively). Finally, characteristic growth constants from von Bertalanffy models showed that turtles grew more quickly in passively managed habitat compared to the actively managed habitat. Our results suggest that management strategies for this sensitive status species may be more effective if they protect passively managed muted tidal systems that limit or delay extreme cycles of salinity and water levels and conserve elevated terrestrial buffer zones adjacent to muted and full tidal systems.
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Acknowledgements
All turtles were captured under California Department of Fish and Wildlife Scientific Collecting Permits SC-17801 and SC-13482. All handling and animal treatment were performed in agreement with the UC Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee protocol no. 20411. We thank the California Department of Water Resources (agreement number 4600011551), and the University of California, Davis Graduate Studies (Graduate Research Mentorship Fellowship) and Ecology Graduate Group (Henry A. Jastro Research Fellowship) for funding. We thank the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for site access and facilitating the study. We also thank the numerous volunteers who helped with fieldwork during the study, especially Orlando Rocha, Sarah Estrella, Candice Rose, Laura Kojima, Justin Nowakowski, David Eng, and Laureen Barthman-Thompson. We thank A. Justin Nowakowski, Peter Moyle, and Daniel Karp for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
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Agha, M., Yackulic, C.B., Riley, M.K. et al. Brackish Tidal Marsh Management and the Ecology of a Declining Freshwater Turtle. Environmental Management 66, 644–653 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01326-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01326-0