Georgia ‘T-Rex of turtles’ added to U.S. threatened species list

GEORGIA — The Suwannee alligator snapping turtle, which only lives in Georgia and Florida’s Suwannee River Basin, was officially named to the threatened species list in the Federal Register on Thursday.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first proposed putting the species on the list of those in danger of extinction in April 2021 in a bid to add it to wildlife protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Now, FWS has officially declared the species is threatened, meaning the government provides a number of protections for the species, including bans on killing, harming or harvesting the species.

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The Suwannee River basin, which stretches across portions of Georgia and Florida, from north of Albany, Ga. to south of Gainesville, Fla. is the only place the turtles live, according to FWS, including in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp.

In an April publication, FWS described the species as “the T-Rex of turtles” with a thick-ridged armored shell, a long tail and a wedged-shaped head with powerful jaws. The species’ population decline began in earnest in the late 1960s, when FWS said a fad for turtle soup led to them being overhunted and almost eaten into extinction.

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In 1992, Georgia banned hunting the turtles, and Florida followed suit in 2009, but due to how slow the species grows and low reproduction rates, the turtle’s population has not recovered, federal officials said.

That’s why FWS proposed listing the turtles as threatened in 2021. Teams of scientists and trappers have been monitoring the species in Florida and Georgia for years, which “helps the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decide if the turtles require protection under the Endangered Species Act, alerts the agency of threats, and shows the need for habitat improvements.”

“They are no longer harvested. A lot of the watershed is protected,” he said. Today, their biggest threats are accidental hooking from fishing and groundwater withdrawal decreasing flows in the Suwannee River. Over the years Enge and Thomas have probably caught more than 300 turtles, but it doesn’t get old. “It’s still exciting when we get a big one,” Kevin Enge, a research scientist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told the FWS.

Scientists working for state and federal agencies said the turtles can weigh as much as 127 pounds, and one specimen examined by Enge estimated a turtle they’d checked out was between 60 to 70 years old.

“We don’t know how long they live because they outlive the researchers,” Travis Thomas, a researcher and Enge’s trapping partner, said.

As of this week, the turtles are officially recognized as a threatened species, though some of the biologists monitoring the turtles say there’s still hope to save them.

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