Endangered
Blanding's turtle
Emydoidea blandingii
Blanding's turtle is a turtle in the family Emydidae — Emydoidea blandingii, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
A distinguishing feature of this turtle is the bright yellow chin and throat. The carapace, or upper shell, is domed, but slightly flattened along the midline, and is oblong when viewed from above. The carapace is speckled with numerous yellow or light-colored flecks or streaks on a dark background.
Blanding's turtle is a medium-sized turtle with an average straight carapace length of approximately 18 to 23 cm (7.1 to 9.1 in) with a maximum of 25.5 cm (10.0 in).
Range and habitat
The geographic range of E. Blandingii centres on the Great Lakes, and extends from central Nebraska and Minnesota (where it twice failed to become the state reptile) eastward through southern Ontario and the south shore of Lake Erie as far east as northern New York. Its general habitat is wetlands with clean shallow water. Young will often travel far in search of mating sites, new habitat, or new food sources, as do elder turtles.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
It is omnivorous, eating crustaceans (among them crayfish), insects (such as dragonfly nymphs and aquatic beetles), snails and other invertebrates, fish, fish eggs, frogs, carrion, berries, seeds, and vegetable debris. It will eat coontail, duckweed, sedge, and bulrush.
In crisis
It is considered to be an endangered species throughout much of its range. The primary threat to Blanding's turtle is habitat fragmentation and destruction as well as nest predation by unnaturally large populations of predators. It is listed as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List as endangered in some U.S. States, and as either threatened or endangered throughout Canada, though in the U.S. It has no federal status.
International trade in Blanding's turtle is restricted, as the species is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meaning that international trade is regulated by the CITES permit system. The U.S. States in that it is considered endangered are Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and South Dakota.
Blanding's turtle is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Blanding's turtle, Wikidata item Q185526. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
