00:00They hatched before my eyes and now they're thriving in the wild.
00:05Aussie Arc is thrilled to confirm our captive born endangered freshwater turtles are not
00:09only surviving but thriving back in the rivers where they belong. This is the news we've been
00:14hoping and praying to hear after years of hard work. It all began with the successful hatching
00:20of turtles in our Conservation Arc facility followed up by months of health checks and
00:25hardening for the wild. In total last spring we released 35 turtles of which 22 were fitted with
00:32tracking devices. It was only the second rewilding of turtles in our organisation's history and the
00:39first ever use of VHF telemetry to track their survival post-release.
00:47Since that historic time PhD student Pham Van Tong from Western Sydney University
00:52has been on the river edge week after week checking in on the turtles.
00:57Mr Tong used his iPhone to capture moments from his scientific research including other volunteers
01:02helping. Most of his time he located and mapped the movement of our turtles thanks to the transmitters
01:09on their shells. This revealed that the turtles adapted fast to the river environment it also
01:15showed dispersal of the turtles. One interesting observation was that the turtles were quite
01:20unsettled for the first 10 days moving around frequently as they explored their new environment.
01:27However once they found a suitable habitat or niche their movements became much more localised
01:33and some have remained in those same areas until now. The older ones move much further afield than the
01:40youngsters with some individuals dispersing more than two kilometres from the release site.
01:45So adventurous! The data also revealed that all the turtles spent most of their time in slow moving
01:53sections of the river and that the older turtles explored more deeply. This data was invaluable as it
02:01showed how captive bred turtles settle into a natural river environment. One important job was collecting
02:07non-invasive swab samples to understand which viruses naturally present in healthy many liver turtles.
02:14Mr Tong also compared body mass before and after release and found that most turtles had gained weight
02:19which is encouraging and shows they are successfully finding wild food. Go turtles!
02:26Aussie Ark is absolutely thrilled with this post-release survivorship of our turtles. It proves that
02:31endangered species can be captive born and raised and adapt well to the wild and it also proves that
02:37we're doing everything right in our breeding program at Conservation Ark. From rescuing a species through
02:43to offering it a whole new future. It's the inspiration we need as we prepare for even more wild releases
02:49this summer. Please help Aussie Ark continue its vital work breeding and rewilding endangered freshwater turtles
02:55by donating now at aussieark.org.au
02:58you
