Creating landscape‐appropriate habitat restoration strategies: success of a novel nesting habitat design for imperiled freshwater turtles

Abstract

Turtle nesting habitat can be created as a restoration strategy to increase habitat availability or provide suitable habitat away from threats. Traditional nest habitat restoration consists of creating nesting mounds using a mix of sand and gravel. However, nesting mounds do not resemble natural turtle nesting habitat in a rock barren landscape where turtles nest in crevices and cracks in the bedrock. Therefore, our objective was to design and evaluate the success of a landscape‐appropriate design for turtle nesting habitat in a rock barren landscape. To evaluate success of the nest habitat design, we assessed the (1) survival of transplanted moss and lichen cover on created nest sites, (2) ecohydrological and physical conditions at created and natural sites, and (3) turtle egg hatching success at created and natural sites using a split‐clutch experiment. We found no difference in productivity between lichen transplants and natural sites, indicating that intact lichen transplants were successful. Moss transplant success was more variable due to moisture stress because transplants were conducted during dry conditions. In general, created nest habitat tended to have a more stable thermal and moisture regime compared to natural sites. When accounting for maternal effects, the odds of an egg hatching successfully was 6.6 times higher in a created site than a natural site. Overall, the success of our nest habitat design in the first few years suggests that this landscape‐appropriate design will be a useful restoration strategy for increasing turtle nesting habitat in rock barren landscapes.