Want to help North Carolina turtles? Sign up for this free license plate.
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For turtles in North Carolina, the summer is a peak time for two things.
The first is mating, with the summertime heat giving turtles a nice temperature to lay their eggs.
This, however, leads to the second peak of the summer: an uptick in turtle injuries and deaths.
“A lot of them get hit by cars,” veterinary student Bayli Wellman said. “They’ll be trying to look for the right area to lay their eggs, and a lot of the time that involves crossing busy roads.”
Wellman is co-president of the N.C. State Turtle Rescue Team, a student-run wildlife rehabilitation center. She said the team usually helps five or six turtles a day, a number that can double this tine of year. To date, they’ve rescued about 460, with most of them being Eastern box or aquatic turtles.
The most common injuries the center sees are car-related.
“We can put their shells back together. If they have injuries to any of their limbs, we can sometimes amputate those,” Wellman said. “We do unfortunately have to euthanize a lot of turtles as well if they have injuries that aren’t survivable.”
Recently, the Turtle Rescue Team launched a way to address this problem, and it involves using cars on the road.
The team is giving away 300 free specialty license plates to drivers in North Carolina.
Each plate has a turtle image on the left side and a space on the right for a four-letter personalized message.
So far, the team has signed up 188 people.
Wellman said a donor is paying for the specialty plates and if all 300 slots are filled, the center will get about $3,000.
But the plates also serve another important purpose: raising awareness of the center.
“A lot of people don’t know that we exist,” she said. “People bring us turtles for the first time, and they’re like ‘I always found all these turtles, and I never knew you were here.’”
The team also helps other reptiles like frogs, lizards and snakes.
Because the team does surgeries, it handles both wildlife brought in from the community and transfers from other rehabilitation groups
“We see turtles that are caught with fishing hooks, turtles that get chewed by dogs, other infections,” she said. “Our goal is to fix them up as best as we can.”
After the animals recover, they are returned to their homes or adopted out if they can no longer survive in the wild.
The center is almost all run by students, who respond to rescue calls 365 days a year from 8 am to 8 pm.
It also runs nearly all on donations.
Wellman said while donors have kept the center going, a lot of their equipment is old and the animals’ care can be costly.
“When we have 70 turtles in here, we go through a lot of food,” she said. “We have an anesthesia machine, but it’s super old. It could be upgraded if we had more funding.”
How can I get a free turtle license plate?
Fill out the Turtle Rescue Team’s sign-up form. It will ask for your full name and email address. After that, you’ll receive a more detailed DocuSign to fill out for your license plate. If you have any questions, email the team at trt.plates@gmail.com.
When will I get my license plate?
The Turtle Rescue Team has to have 300 people sign up before they can order the plates from the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles. Right now, they need about 112 more applications.
Are there other ways to help the center?
Yes. The center accepts financial and other donations like turtle food, heating pads/lights and mulch. They also need people to foster turtles that are being rehabilitated.
For more information, email the team at turtle-rescue-team@ncsu.edu or call them at 919-397-9675.
