AUSTIN – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has selected the Houston Zoo as a 2019 Recovery Champion Award winner for its leadership in veterinary and rehabilitation care, debris removal, and human behavior-change education for the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle and other Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed sea turtle species on the upper Texas coast.
The nationally recognized Recovery Champion Award celebrates the contributions and achievements of organizations who have devoted themselves to recovering endangered and threatened animals and plants.
“As the most endangered sea turtle species in the world, the recovery of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles is among our most pressing conservation priorities on the Texas coast,” said Amy Lueders, Regional Director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southwest Region. “The Houston Zoo has stepped up not only to provide treatment and care for injured, stranded and cold-stunned sea turtles on the upper Texas coast, they have also invested significant time and resources into educating the public and fostering a community-wide conservation ethic to help sea turtles and other coastal wildlife. We are proud and honored to call the Zoo our partner in conservation and this year’s Recovery Champion.”
The sea turtle program at the Zoo started in the early 1980’s, with Houston Zoo Senior Veterinarian Dr. Joe Flanagan assisting with treating injured and stranded sea turtles and advising on Kemp’s ridley sea turtle rearing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Galveston Laboratory. Today, the program has evolved into a Zoo-wide team effort ranging from veterinary treatment to public outreach, requiring time and expertise across multiple departments including keepers, supervisors, curators and many other staff and zoo members.
“It's been really fun to watch, because at first it was just me,” Flanagan said. “And now it's everybody from the front gate admissions people to the facilities people in the back house that have gotten involved in sea turtle conservation, fundraising, beach patrolling and litter pickup…This is not just an ordinary zoo, it is a place where we are really trying to connect people to have that emotional connection to want to do something to save animals in the wild.”
In 2019, through the collaboration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Park Service, the Zoo was asked to increase its commitment to helping listed sea turtles on the upper Texas coast. The Zoo expanded its commitment to include two full-time sea turtle hospital staff working in the NOAA Fisheries Galveston Laboratory to ensure that sick, injured, and cold stunned sea turtles continue to receive the care and rehabilitation needed for recovery and release into the wild. The increased support the Houston Zoo is providing includes salaries for the sea turtle hospital keepers, medications, medical supplies, and food for hospitalized turtles and for a new response and transport vehicle.
The Zoo’s increased commitment to helping rehabilitate and release sea turtles is what led Mary Kay Skoruppa, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sea Turtle Coordinator for Texas, to nominate the team for the prestigious Recovery Champion award.
“This past year has been amazing,” Skoruppa said. “The Zoo really stepped up when we urgently needed sea turtle rehabilitation response on the upper Texas coast. Dr. Joe and the rest of the team have saved the lives of hundreds of injured, stranded and cold-stunned sea turtles, and we are honored to recognize everyone on the staff for their efforts to help recover all of the threatened and endangered sea turtle species that live in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Flanagan said many sea turtle injuries are caused by boat strikes, shark bites, and ingestion of plastic debris, but on the upper Texas coast there is a higher incidence of being entangled in fishing line or unintentionally caught on hooks by recreational anglers. The Zoo has been instrumental in helping these turtles recover, like the green sea turtle named “Beefcake” who was found tangled in fishing line in Galveston in January 2020. After being treated in the vet clinic and cared for by staff for a few weeks, the team was able to successfully release him back into the Gulf of Mexico later that month.
With up to 100 sick and injured sea turtles coming to the vet clinic each year, the team has no shortage of stories about the patients who have come into their care. While many are injured by fishing line or caught on hooks, Flanagan said he has also seen Kemp’s ridley hatchlings washing back to shore with shell lesions, loggerhead sea turtles found debilitated with digestive issues, and even a green sea turtle found living in a freshwater pond on a closed golf course in Alief.
“This turtle had been out of seawater for six months, and classically what we know is that if you put a green sea turtle in fresh water it’s dead within four or five days because they lose all of their sodium,” Flanagan said. “I communicated with all of my colleagues and all these sea turtle hospitals around the country and nobody had had a case like this, and everybody said, ‘good luck.’ It took a little over two months to get it back up to tolerate full strength seawater. One of the things I love about my job in general and I enjoy about sea turtles is it's constantly changing and constantly challenging me to learn and know more and have better skills.”
Another case Flanagan said he will never forget is that of a female Kemp’s ridley sea turtle who was found trying to dig a nest to lay eggs at the west end of the seawall in Galveston. When the team arrived to pick her up the prognosis was grim – she had been hit by a boat and lost about one-third of her back shell. Flanagan said after transporting her to the clinic, the team was able to not only induce her to release 69 of her eggs, they were able to fully treat her injuries and successfully release her back into the Gulf of Mexico nearly a year later. Additionally, the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery team led by Dr. Donna Shaver at Padre Island National Seashore was able to hatch 57 of her eggs and release them back into the Gulf of Mexico during a hatchling release later that year.
The best part of all, Flanagan said, is that a living tag found on her shell revealed she had been a hatchling released in 1993 as part of the head-start sea turtle program he assisted in Galveston.
“I helped release those turtles, I helped put them in the water,” Flanagan said. “And the feeling that I had, I mean, I'm getting emotional now. Turtles are long-lived animals, and you just can’t make any assumptions that you’ll ever see one again once you release it, but she was a head-start turtle and she had 57 babies that went back in the water. To see her come back to Galveston to nest and lay her eggs, and to have the opportunity to put her back in the water a second time was a career highlight for me.”
Though the staff is equipped to help every sea turtle that comes into its care, Flanagan said reducing threats to sea turtles on the coast is the most important step in helping sea turtle populations recover. To this end, the Houston Zoo Sea Lion team facilitates the work of many zoo staff and volunteers to remove monofilament line and other marine debris from jetties, while educating the public on the coast and guiding Community Based Social Marketing campaigns for sustained behavior change.
“We’re kind of special and we're lucky because we actually get to handle the live animals, which is what it's all about for us, but preventing the problem in the first place is really far more effective for wildlife across the board,” Flanagan said. “Removing that fishing line saves not only sea turtles, but all of those pelicans and gulls that don't have to have wing amputations and therefore euthanasia, and all the other sea life that comes in the nearshore environment.”
In addition to keeping beaches and fishing sites clean of plastic trash and fishing line, the Zoo urges people to call 1-866-TURTLE-5 if they find or accidentally catch a sea turtle so that an expert can assess the turtle and provide care if needed. Those who don’t live near the coast can play a part in sea turtle recovery as well by reducing the use of single-use plastics to keep them out of landfills and the ocean.
“Everybody can help save wildlife,” Flanagan said. “If you walk in the woods, if you walk in the park, if you walk along the street – pick up garbage, pick up plastics, pick up strings, and don’t release balloons at weddings or any celebrations. Take action when you have the opportunity, support the natural places that we have, and fight to protect them.”
For more information about the Houston Zoo’s sea turtle work, visit https://www.houstonzoo.org/explore/animals/sea-turtle/.
For more information about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Champion awards, and to learn about other winners, visit https://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/recovery-champions/index.html.
