Dutchess County Turtle Conservation Partnership
A collaborative partnership that recognizes effective turtle protection takes coordination across property lines and organizations.
Winnakee Land Trust has been awarded a $44,900 Conservation Catalyst Grant through the New York State Conservation Partnership Program to support the Dutchess County Turtle Conservation Partnership, a collaborative effort to monitor at-risk turtle populations and care for the wetlands they depend on.
The award was announced on October 1 by Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Amanda Lefton as part of $2.7 million going to 45 land trusts across the state. The program is funded by the state’s Environmental Protection Fund and administered by the Land Trust Alliance in coordination with DEC. Winnakee’s award is one of 56 projects funded statewide this year.
Winnakee is carrying out the project with The Wetland Trust, with support from the Center for Reptile and Amphibian Conservation. The grant includes hands-on educational programs in collaboration with Arlington High School and Cornell Cooperative Extension’s No Child Left Inside program. DEC, New York State Parks, and Hudsonia will be consulted on findings, with additional support provided by fellow land trusts, including Scenic Hudson, The Dutchess Land Conservancy, The Wallkill Valley Land Trust, and Columbia Land Conservancy, who have volunteered for Winnakee’s monitoring program.
The grant will equip partners with trapping supplies, protective gear, and radio transmitters. It also adds a new tool: GPS transmitters. For the last few years, the program has relied on radio tracking, which can only locate a turtle when staff are in the field. The new GPS units record a location every day, giving a much clearer picture of how turtles use their habitat and move through the forest. The GPS transmitters will also be a game changer for staff capacity, allowing field visits outside of nesting season to drop from weekly to monthly. That means more staff time for other stewardship projects, less disturbance for the turtles, and more data than the partnership has ever had.
“Turtles in our region face growing pressure from habitat loss and road mortality,” said Jen Adams, Winnakee’s Senior Biologist. “Turtles have strong homing instincts and adapt poorly to change, so development that fragments their habitat can take a real toll on survival and reproduction. Because turtles travel frequently between wetlands, forests, and open sandy nesting sites, protecting them takes coordination across property lines and organizations, which this partnership seeks to address.”
Tracking data will be mapped to show how turtles move through monitoring sites and how long they stay, particularly in forestland outside of nesting season. Partners will meet at least six times over the year to share findings on trapping, nesting, and tracking.
“Dutchess County is home to important wetland habitats, and the turtles that depend on them need all of us working together,” added Adams. “Involving partners in our turtle monitoring projects has been a priority from the beginning. This grant lets us deepen partnership collaboration across more sites, so that the work each of us is already doing adds up to something far greater.”
The program also incorporates teaching opportunities for students to interact with turtles and be a part of the research. Students from Arlington High School, No Child Left Inside, and other local school programs will join the trapping and tracking work, learning wildlife monitoring techniques along the way.
“By spearheading the Dutchess County Turtle Conservation Partnership, Winnakee hopes to offer a model for collaborative conservation planning, showing how land trusts can work together across the landscape to protect flagship species that depend on healthy ecosystems,” said Bob Davis, Winnakee CEO. “We are grateful to the Land Trust Alliance, DEC, and New York State for investing in this program and to our many partners who will help scale it across the county.”
Header photo: Winnakee interns and students from Cornell Cooperative Extension’s No Child Left Inside program participating in Winnakee’s spring 2026 turtle monitoring program
DIG DEEPER:
WATCH OUR WEBINAR ABOUT WINNAKEE’S PARTNERSHIP WITH THE WETLAND TRUST
Protecting Wetlands for Wildlife, Water & Resilience
Featured speakers: Lindsay Charlop, The Wetland Trust; Jen Adams, Uri Perrin and Todd Waldron of Winnakee Land Trust.
