TERRAPIN BOOSTERS - Students seek study to prevent further decline

TERRAPIN BOOSTERS - Students seek study to prevent further decline

By SARA MARSH Staff Writer

They have gone from being served to hungry Minutemen during the Revolutionary War to serving as the mascot of the University of Maryland College Park.

But Maryland's diamondback terrapin now appears to be in decline, and local students are leading the charge to help save the state reptile.

Armed with two teen-aged female terrapins and four silver dollar-sized younger ones, students from Millersville Elementary, St. Mary's Elementary in Annapolis and Samuel Ogle Elementary in Bowie on Friday took their case to members of Anne Arundel's House of Delegates contingent.

Led by William Moulden, a Crownsville resident and Samuel Ogle sixth-grade science teacher, the group urged delegation members to ask Gov. Parris N. Glendening to include $250,000 in a supplemental budget for a five-year stock assessment of the diamondback terrapin in the tidewater and coastal bay area. "This is a time where you're five to 10 years ahead of the crisis curve," Mr. Moulden told delegation members. "There is clear anecdotal evidence a Maryland icon is in decline."

The funding would allow the state Department of Natural Resources to conduct its first study of the terrapin population, as well as allow experts to examine the turtle's movement and behavior, and identify threats it faces, Mr. Moulden said.

To reinforce their point, the seven children from local schools carefully carried the terrapins around the room, showing them to captivated delegates and explaining a bit about their green flippered friends. Millersville and Samuel Ogle elementaries both have programs in which they help raise baby terrapins before releasing them into the wild.

"They're a symbol. They live to be 50 years old," said Millersville Elementary third-grader Morgan McWilliams, 8, while waiting to show delegates one of the small, dark green terrapins that she and fellow classmate Jenna Carr, 8, were carrying in a large, white bucket.

"It's a symbol of Maryland," said St. Mary's seventh-grader Betsy Moulden, 13, of Crownsville. "We don't want to lose them on our watch."

Chesapeake diamondback terrapins are distinguished by the diamond-shaped, concentric rings on the thin scales of their upper shells. They live in brackish water and hibernate under water in the mud during the winter. In late May, diamondback terrapins emerge to bask in the sun, mate and nest in coastal dunes or narrow sandy beaches. Female terrapins usually lay about a dozen eggs at a time, but only 2 percent of the eggs laid produce a hatchling.

The terrapins were nearly harvested to extinction in the last century, but have since made a slow comeback and are still legal to eat in Maryland today. Once considered a delicacy, Gen. George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette are said to have dined on terrapins the night before the battle of Yorktown, said Marguerite Whilden, DNR's program manager for outreach and advancement.

Delegation members pledged their support.

"We have an opportunity here to do a pre-emptive study and solve the problem before it gets to crisis proportions," said Del. James E. Rzepkowski, R-Glen Burnie. "As a (University of Maryland) College Park terrapin myself, I don't want that to happen on my watch."

The governor himself was impressed with the children's effort.

"I'll look at their request and see," Mr. Glendening said on Friday afternoon. "It's great the students are asking that and that they know to come here."