It's World Turtle Day! (Patreon)

Happy World Turtle Day! We’d like to share a wonderful update about the Western pond turtles that we featured in our previous Deep Look episode, “These Crazy Cute Baby Turtles Want Their Lake Back.”

In 2015, Presidio Trust wildlife ecologists (including Jonathan Young, who’s worked with our series on several episodes) reintroduced native Western pond turtles to the Presidio’s Mountain Lake in San Francisco after an extensive effort to clean up the area. They recently found a baby turtle: it’s the first confirmation that the reintroduced turtles have grown up and successfully reproduced!

More work is underway “to increase biodiversity in the park by restoring habitat that enables native species to thrive,” says Lisa Petrie of the Presidio Trust. “To date, five native species have been reintroduced at Mountain Lake: chorus frogs, Western pond turtles, three-spine stickleback fish, the San Francisco forktail damselfly and the California floater mussel.” Learn more about this unique area of San Francisco here.

All images courtesy of The Presidio Trust