Turtles make good pets<\/strong><\/h3>\nLovich says with proper care, turtles make good pets. He tells people to make sure not to buy turtles from a pet shop unless it is known they are bred in captivity. Taking turtles from the wild only compounds their plight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want a pet turtle,\u201d says Lovich, whose current pet turtle, Lucky, is an African leopard tortoise, \u201cfind a reputable breeder or pet shop that sells captive-bred animals.\u201d \u201cBetter yet, contact the Phoenix Herpetological Society about how to adopt an unwanted turtle.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
Turtles also help scientists determine if an ecosystem is becoming contaminated. Because some species can live to be over a hundred years old, they accumulate high levels of toxic pollutants such as mercury, which can help indicate if an ecosystem is becoming poisonous.<\/p>\n
Some turtles dig deep burrows for shelter that in turn provide living spaces for other species. Also, plant-eating turtles are important agents for spreading and enhancing the germination of seeds.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver half of the species worldwide are threatened with extinction unless the loss of their habitats and over-exploitation is halted,\u201d reports Lovich, who also works with the Colorado Plateau Research Station for the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p>\n
Sea turtles are threatened worldwide, especially the leatherback sea turtle \u2014 the largest living reptile that can grow to more than 2,000 pounds and up to 8 feet long.<\/p>\n
\u201cDue to hunting for meat, some turtle species are down to the last few individuals. Lonesome George is the last known living survivor of his species of Galapagos tortoises,\u201d Lovich reports. \u201cThe survival of the Yangtze soft-shell turtle is dependent on one male and one female at two zoos in China. Two years ago, they brought them together to mate to save the species. The female laid eggs but they did not develop. This year the same thing happened but we have our fingers crossed that next year will be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lovich is currently \u201cinfatuated\u201d with helping to find ways to protect a species of aquatic turtle with rare blue eyes that lives in the Dra\u00e2 River in the Sahara Desert of Morocco. He started a study on them last year while teaching graduate-level ecology on a Fulbright Scholarship at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakesh. \u201cI hope to get funding from National Geographic to go back next spring to study their reproductive ecology,\u201d says Lovich.<\/p>\n
Lovich\u2019s fascination with turtles began with his first pet turtle when he was 6 years old. He\u2019s been researching them for 30 years and has discovered and named more than 1 percent of the world\u2019s turtles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They\u2019ve been on the Earth for more than 200 million years, but these days, turtles are in trouble. \u201cSimply put, turtles are declining in numbers,\u201d says\u00a0Jeff Lovich, an NAU researcher, biology lecturer and author of a new book,\u00a0Turtles of the United States and Canada,\u00a0Johns Hopkins University Press. Written with fellow turtle expert Carl Ernst, the…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":16122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}