On Friday afternoon, children traipsed across a boardwalk at a new exhibit at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk, peering over the railings into water trickling below.
“Look, mom, a turtle!” one girl exclaimed. “It’s a big one!”
They had arrived at the “Turtle Oasis.” That’s what the Virginia Zoo calls its latest exhibit, which opened to the public in October but will have a grand opening on Saturday.
“This space is focused on the rescue, research and rehabilitation of North American freshwater turtle species,” said Sydney Fordice, a spokesperson for the zoo.
The oasis takes over a stone dwelling that was first built as a popular sea lion habitat in the 1950s. The site’s been empty since that exhibit closed in the ‘90s.
Fordice said the idea was to upcycle the space by utilizing the original inground pool. The zoo built a boardwalk that overlooks water and native vegetation with “nice, soothing sounds of little trickling waterfalls.”
“People can actually walk over the turtles as they may be swimming underneath them, crossing in between those pools,” she said.
The oasis is now home to 26 of the reptiles including alligator snapping turtles, wood turtles, spotted turtles and Blanding’s turtles, the latter three of which are endangered species.
Many of the individuals were likely confiscated through the illegal pet trade or otherwise rescued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Fordice said. They often cannot be reintroduced into the wild because of disease or officials don’t know where they specifically came from.
“This gives them a safe space where they can live in a naturalistic environment,” she said.
The zoo doesn’t plan to purposefully breed the turtles in the oasis, but that might happen naturally. Though the exhibit’s been open for months, the turtles only recently emerged from a brumation period – essentially hibernation for reptiles.
One of the biggest threats to North American freshwater turtles is habitat loss, due to things like pollution and deforestation.
Fordice said the zoo hopes to educate visitors about how to help protect turtles, such as planting native vegetation and avoiding pesticides that could harm insects on which turtles feed.
She said unlike many more exotic animals at the zoo, some of these turtles are the same ones you’d spot around Hampton Roads.
