Research Highlight
Cory Trowbridge: Leading Wood Turtle Research
Cory Trowbridge, a PhD student in the University of New Brunswick’s Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, is studying the impact of the working forest on wood turtles, a federally endangered species. The study’s findings will inform future forestry practices.
As a species that lives in forested environments around rivers, wood turtles can be susceptible to impacts from forest management practices. Learning about this turtle can both allow us to monitor how the working forest already supports diverse species and what it could do better.
In 2024, Cory and his team tagged 19 female wood turtles with GPS and radio transmitters in order to learn their movements and what habitats are used. Next, the turtles will be studied to analyze how harvested areas impact their habitat selection.
“You don’t often in biology get chances to do such a study of a before/after, especially on this scale of wildlife biology and wildlife ecology,” Cory said. “Usually you’re coming into a population that’s already been affected by something and you’re trying to see how they reacted to it when you don’t know what happened before. Luckily here we’re able to know what happens before so we can see what they do after.”
Wood turtles, unlike other turtle species in Canada, stay on land for the majority of the summer. They like semi-forested conditions so that they can warm up in the sunlight of open areas and cool down in canopy covered areas, conditions that the working forest can provide.
