Grand Isle

The Coastal Ecology Lab at Nicholls State University and The Nature Conservancy have long collaborated on better understanding the Chenier Forest located at TNC’s Lafitte Woods Preserve on Grand Isle. This partnership took an interesting turn in 2019 when Dr. Timothy Clay, a herpetologist and Assistant Professor of Biology at Nicholls State University, stumbled upon a lone box turtle while exploring the forest with students.  

This surprised Dr. Clay because box turtles are not found on the mainland nearby. To satisfy their curiosity, the group embarked on determining whether this was a wayward individual, maybe brought to the island by people, or a previously unknown, self-sustaining population. He and his students have been studying the reptiles ever since.

"This forest has been a focus of many wildlife studies in the past, but usually related to migratory birds since Grand Isle is such a vital stopover point for them,” says Clay. “Relatively little has been done on animals that live there all of the time, animals that are confined to an island that experiences extreme weather on a regular basis. We are grateful to TNC for allowing us access to this living laboratory.”

With the help of undergraduate and graduate students, Dr. Clay has been surveying the Chenier Forest for box turtles over the past five years. Specifically, they have been conducting a mark-recapture study, which involves identifying individual turtles and looking for them again during future surveys, to estimate abundance and survival rates for this population. Since 2020, the team has found over 90 box turtles and estimates that there are more than 120 adult turtles on the island. Our data also suggests high adult survival rates, which is important to maintain populations over the long-term. These high survival rates are likely because of the protection provided by the forest from extreme weather conditions experienced by barrier islands.

“During our surveys we’ve been lucky to witness more evidence suggesting that this is a healthy population, including the discovery of our very first box turtle nest this year,” adds Clay. “We’ve also spotted numerous other resident species including legless glass lizards, which are also not found nearby, further supporting the uniqueness and importance of Grand Isle’s Chenier Forest.”