Stopping to think about an especially shy turtle, an endangered plant of the Nebraska Sandhills, national wildlife refuges and birds that prefer a horizontal landscape

Jun 21, 2023

It’s the kind of thing a guy like me can do at this stage in his writing life.

Obsess a bit in print, over a turtle. The kind of turtle I’ve never even seen, as far as I know.

Truth is, here in South Dakota nobody has seen one since 1963, as far as anybody knows. And even then, it was just one.

One turtle. One Blanding’s turtle.

That’s right, the only verified sighting of a Blanding’s turtle in South Dakota seems to be that one turtle back in ’63. Oh, there were a couple of other many years back from southeast South Dakota, but they weren’t verified.

So, we’ve got to go with just that one, 60 years ago.

And even that one verified Blanding’s turtle sighting came with some question marks, because it was found in the Big Sioux River — a decent place for a Blanding’s, but not ideal. That has led some to wonder if the turtle had been captured elsewhere and released near Sioux Falls.

Sure, Blanding’s turtles can embrace a muddy, slow-moving river like the Big Sioux. So that one in ’63 might have been there naturally. But they really prefer something mucky and marshy, with lots of slough grass and other aquatic and riparian vegetation and plenty of connecting wetlands interspersed with expanses of grasslands. The bigger the better.

A place, then, like the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the Nebraska Sandhills, where I stopped to snoop around a bit a couple of weeks ago during a desultory drive back from Lincoln to Rapid City.

At a refuge information kiosk along U.S. Highway 83, I learned a fair bit about the refuge and some of its wildlife species. They included the Blanding’s turtle and the challenges it faces across much its native range from central Nebraska across the Midwest to the Great Lakes.

Those challenges include habitat destruction and fragmentation, nest predation (possibly up to 75 percent or even more) and the fatal run-ins with vehicles on roads and highways as the turtles migrate up to a mile or even more in some cases to find nesting sites during spring breeding.

And right there I was hooked. On a turtle. A turtle I’d never seen. A turtle that, who knows, I might never see, although I intend to try.

Either way, hooked.

Reading more at that roadside kiosk I was also soon hooked on something called the blowout pentstemon. It’s a pretty little perennial with purple blooms that exists only in Nebraska’s Sandhills and in a few patches of landscape further west in Wyoming.

And even there its existence is tenuous . It was thought extinct by 1940, but discovered in the wind in the late 1960s. It’s now listed as endangered, state and federally. And, ironically enough, it is endangered in large part by improved range management practices by private ranchers.

The blowout pentstemon and filling the void

Crazy, huh? A plant of the grasslands is suffering because of improved range management. But it’s not all that crazy when you go back and consider the name: blowout pentstemon.

To be clear, “blowout” for our purposes here does not mean taking a blow dryer to your hair. Blowouts are the depressions “blown out” in sandy soil by wind erosion.

Blowouts are common in sand dune environments when the surface of grasses and forbs is disturbed, such as by drought and intense grazing or by fire. If the grasses and other plants and their root systems are lost, it leaves the underlying sandy soil open to wind erosion.

It is said, most often in terms of physics, I think, that nature abhors a vacuum, and every space will soon be filled. Blowout pentstemon is one of the plants that comes in first when a vacuum or space is left or created in an ecosystem.

The plant had lots of work to do on the grasslands of old, when wildfires regularly swept over large expanses of the prairie and massive herds of bison roughed up the ground with their hooves and grazing and wallowing. In areas like the Sandhills, that opened up the sand to the wind, which carved out blowouts for the pentstemon and other plants to fill.

But the blowout pentstemon is a fairly weak competitor, as it probably was intended to be. So it tends to give way over time and better conditions to other more permanent plants that can come in on damaged ground to continue the healing the blowout pentstemon began. By its own work, then, the blowout pentstemon helps threaten its very survival.

“After that early succession community, it’ll convert to sand bluestem, little bluestem and a variety of other grasses and forbs,” says Matt Sprenger, who is the manager of the Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

More on that amazing complex in a minute. And it’s worth more, because it’s pretty cool.

But for now, a brief digression on sand bluestem. I came across some while strolling along a short nature trail at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. A clump of grass that looked familiar was identified by a nearby sign as sand bluestem. It looks a lot like big bluestem, one of my prairie favorites.

As its name implies, however, sand bluestem likes sandy soils and tends to dominate big bluestem in those environments.

“If you go north, east or south and get out of the Sandhills, sand bluestem is replaced by big bluestem,” Sprenger said by phone a week or so after I stopped at Valentine NWR.

I was interested in sand bluestem. But our conversation quickly went back to the blowout pentstemon and its endangered status.

Roughing up the land to save a plant

It makes economic sense for ranchers in the Sandhills to use smart grazing techniques and conservation measures to prevent wind erosion and the blowouts. And that kind of management is good for the ranch and for the overall environment.

But it’s not so good for the blowout pentstemon, especially since there aren’t millions of grazing bison and unchallenged wildfires sweeping the land.

“The biggest overall story with blowout pentstemon is we suspect a declining in that plant’s populations resulting from the fact that there’s less blowing sand in the Nebraska Sandhills,” says Sprenger.

So, not less sand. Less blowing sand.

The blowout pentstemon was listed as endangered by Nebraska in and made the federal endangered list in 1987. At that time, according to the Nebraska Game and Parks website, there were estimated to be about 7,000 blowout pentstemon plants on a total of about 25 acres in the Sandhills.

There is blowout pentstemon at Valentine National Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, Neb., and especially at Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge farther west and south near Oshkosh, Neb., on the southwestern edge of the Nebraska Sandhills.

You know what might seem crazier than a plant that suffers from good grasslands management? The work to restore it when it’s lost. That work includes intense grazing to beat down that vegetation and expose the sand. It also also includes more direct work, with farm equipment.

“You can go in with a tractor and disc areas of sand, or you can use scoop buckets,” Sprenger says. “At Crescent Lake they disturb the soil using the loader bucket mounted on the front of a tractor.”

After they’ve got the exposed sand they want, they go in with transplanted blowout pentstemon grown in a nursery.

“Then you try to create that blowing sand in close proximity (to the transplanted penstemon),” Sprenger said,.

Crescent was established in 1931. It covers more than 45,000 acres and includes the largest complex of protected sand dunes in the United States. It also includes a fair bit of blowout pentstemon, in the right places.

Crescent Lake is a fairly isolated birding hotspot. It is also an important part of the larger complex of national wildlife refuges in the Sandhills that I mentioned earlier. Along with the refuges at Crescent Lake and Valentine and Fort Niobrara near Valentine, there are the North Platte NWR near Scottsbluff, John and Louise Seier NWR near Bassett and, in South Dakota on the northern edge of the Sandhills, Lacreek NWR near Martin, a place I try to visit six or seven times a year.

A “stronghold” for the Blanding’s turtle in a world full of peril

A fairly recent addition to the national wildlife refuge system, the John and Louise Seier refuge has been and is open only to hunting. That was to allow time to develop a comprehensive management plan. The refuge is scheduled to be open next spring, however.

Matt Sprenger is stationed at Fort Niobrara and manages that refuge and Seier, but he oversees the entire complex of Sandhills refuges, a total of some 200,000 acres. That’s a lot of public real estate dedicated to wildlife. To find a bigger complex of national wildlife refuges you’d have travel up to Missouri River country in Montana to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. It’s crazy big, at 1.1 million acres.

Even then, it’s not as big as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, at a ridiculously massive 19.6 million acres. But then when it comes to size and space, Alaska likes to show off.

But getting back to the Blanding’s turtle. Sprenger said the Valentine NWR and other key parts of the Sandhills are “the real stronghold” for Blanding’s turtles.

“It’s probably the biggest stronghold left in the United States,” he says.

That’s encouraging, having the stronghold so close by. And it leaves open the possibility that there is, or eventually could be, a small population of Blanding’s turtles in the limited portions of the northern Sandhills that reach across the state line into South Dakota.

The wetlands in South Dakota’s small part of the Sandhills aren’t as dense as those in Nebraska, so there aren’t as many living options for the Blanding’s.

And it’s possible there are a few Blanding’s in South Dakota in counties bordering Iowa and Minnesota, where the turtle still lives in reduced numbers.

But none have been verified.

The South Dakota Game Fish & Parks is encouraging people to watch for the Blanding’s turtle, which can be identified by its yellowish chin and throat, and report any sightings to GF&P. Reports can be sent to gfp.sd.gov/forms/rarespecies If possible, include a picture and GPS coordinates. Questions can be sent to [email protected]

I’ll be watching here in South Dakota. But I’m also planning on increasing my odds by heading back for the Sandhills. Sprenger says my best chance of seeing a Blanding’s turtle at Valentine NWR would probably be in the spring.

“If you can find that stump or muskrat hut extended into the water, where they’ll be coming up to sun,” he said. “They’ll come up into the uplands to lay their eggs and that. But they are still pretty tight to those wetlands.”

Those journeys up out of the wetlands to lay eggs can be deadly.

“Unfortunately, a lot of them get hit on the roads in the Sandhills,” Sprenger says. “We have fencing along Highway 83 in a number of places in the Valentine refuge to prevent the turtles from getting up on the road, so they have to go through culverts and things.”

Outside the refuge things are more dangerous for turtles on the move, however. Roads and vehicles are dangerous and lethal for any turtle that migrates any distance. Blanding’s, however, are especially timid and more likely to withdraw into their shells when frightened — like, say, by a passing vehicle — and stay there for quite a while.

The longer they’re on the road, the greater their chances of getting run over. And many do.

While it was the Blanding’s turtle and the blowout penstemon that really captured my attention when I stopped along Highway 83 that day, there’s a lot more for Sprenger and other refuge staffers to manage at Valentine. More than 290 bird species have been recorded at the 72,000-acre refuge, along with 42 mammal species, 16 reptile species and six amphibian species.

The best time to plant a tree out on the prairie is, well, um …

The refuge was established during the Dust Bowl — 1935 to be exact — to be preserved and managed for migratory birds and other wildlife. As part of the Nebraska Sandhills, the largest intact grasslands on the continent, the Valentine NWR has as one of its key management objectives protecting prairie birds that over eons evolved based on the landscape they were in.

That means encroachment by trees — the invasive red cedar in particular — is a problem. Sometimes a big problem. While certain bird species use them, trees are at best a mixed blessing in a grasslands ecosystem. And on the refuge itself, the cedar isn’t even a mixed blessing.

Historically, there weren’t many trees in the beautiful-but-harsh grasslands environment. Drought was a limiting factor. So were those sweeping wildfires set by lightnings and indigenous people (for plant management and hunting) and even the bison herds that rubbed and knocked down the trees.

Grassland-dependent birds — like the prairie chicken, sharp-tailed grouse, meadow lark and dickcissel, as well as many species of waterfowl — evolved with a certain types of aerial predators. Those include raptors like the northern harrier (often called the marsh hawk) that do most of their hunting on the move and don’t rely much on perches.

“Those aerial predators that are gliding through, not perching,” Sprenger says.

The grasslands-adapted birds don’t do as well with large number of perching predators.

“We started seeing predators like the great-horned owls, Cooper’s hawks and red-tailed hawks in places they shouldn’t be. And they were there because of the cedars,” Sprenger said. “That creates a predator trap that just breaks up that grasslands landscape that’s so important to these birds that don’t appreciate those visual obstructions on the landscape.”

The birds are naturally wary of vertical intrusions in a naturally horizontal world. And there’s evidence, Sprenger said, that grasslands birds will avoid nesting in areas with trees. There’s also evidence that some of the prairie-nesting birds are declining in numbers, in part because of the conversion of grasslands to cropland and other factors in their nesting and wintering environments and along their migratory routes.

Taking it easy on the bison but tough on the carp

National wildlife refuges like Valentine are intended to give those birds secure nesting and resting areas and a reprieve from challenges they face outside the refuge.

But while birds are by federal decree the priority at the refuges, the management of other kinds of wildlife is important, too. And some, like the bison, also have a long history on the prairie.

There’s a bison herd at Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge near Valentine that currently numbers about 420. Sprenger says the herd will be reduced this fall to about 350 when yearlings are donated to Native American tribal bison programs.

That process is not a promotional extravaganza like the annual Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park here in South Dakota. Like roundups at Wind Cave National Park, which borders Custer Park, and Badlands National Park, the bison roundup at Fort Niobrara is done quietly to limit stress on the bison.

“It’s low key. It’s not a big thing with people on horses, driving the animals,” Sprenger says. “We try to practice low-stress handling and minimize any impact.”

Visitors are welcome, but must follow the rules to avoid stress to the bison.

One area where refuge staffers at Valentine try to have a negative impact on a species, however, is carp control. It’s a never-ending job on Valentine as it is in many waters across the country.

“There are common carp in a number of those refuge lakes and they wreak havoc on water quality and important aquatic vegetation,” Sprenger says

Adaptable omnivores that can thrive in a variety of water systems, Carp often outcompete native species and the fishery of small lakes or reservoirs.

“Typically they’re just not good for a fishery,” Sprenger says.

During the last five years, fisheries professionals for the Nebraska Game and Fish Commission have conducted several “fish kills” in refuge lakes using rotenone, a short-lived poison commonly used for that purpose. Like many fish kills, they have been only partially successful.

Fishing is a popular form of recreation at the refuge. This year some of the Valentine refuge lakes suffered winter fish losses because of heavy snow that blocked sunlight and reduced oxygen levels. State fish crews are formulating restocking plans, primarily with largemouth bass, perch, bluegills and crappies.

What’s all that got to do with the Blanding’s turtle? Well, just enough for a guy like me at this stage in his writing life to obsess a bit.

And then write a little something, like this.