CN-hired consultants have removed more than 100 endangered turtles from a Burnaby Lake nesting area, following a coal train derailment in January.
The Environment Ministry is keeping the Western painted turtles in a facility in North Vancouver and will release them back in the lake, once CN completes restoration efforts at the nesting area, a small beach on the western lakeshore.
Aimee Mitchell, a wildlife biologist and the primary lead for the Coastal Painted Turtle Project, said CN's consultants have been working with her team and the Environment Ministry. According to Mitchell, the consultants need to use the nesting area to access the lake for the coal spill cleanup.
"They've had to actually drive over it. That's been the main reason why they've had to do the (turtle) salvaging, not necessarily because the coal impacted the beach directly," Mitchell said. "They've basically ripped up the beach."
Mitchell said they are removing eggs and hatchlings from the nesting area.
On Jan. 11, a train derailed in Burnaby, spilling coal into Silver Creek, which runs into Burnaby Lake, home to one of the largest known B.C. populations of the Western painted turtle. CN now estimates there are 76 cubic metres of coal in the lake and 5.5 cubic metres of coal in Silver Creek.
According to CN spokesperson Emily Hamer, the company is keeping an eye out for turtles.
"We look for turtles every morning before we start working," she told the NOW.
Hamer said recovery efforts with turtles, amphibians and fish is done daily, before any other work in the water, by provincially and federally certified professionals with licences to recover the species.
The Western painted turtle is native to B.C. and is the only indigenous pond turtle left in the province, unlike the invasive red-eared slider, a species of turtle with a distinct red stripe down the side of its head. (The sliders found in local waters are an introduced species, often abandoned as pets.)
According to Mitchell, there are 20 sites in the Lower Mainland with Western painted turtles, but they are non-breeding groups of only five or fewer turtles.
Mitchell said the success rate at the Burnaby Lake nesting area is 87 per cent, based on work done last fall, where biologists dug up the nests and counted the hatchlings. (Western painted turtle hatchlings will stay buried underground in the nest after they emerge from the eggs.)
The Burnaby Lake turtle population is estimated to be around 200, although no formal counts have ever been conducted. There is also a comparable population in Agassiz, with 200 to 300 turtles.
