Surprising find in gravel after council workers dig up rural road
A slow-moving reptile thought the new conditions created by the roadworks were the perfect place to lay her eggs.
After an Aussie council crew dug up a road close to a major river, a slow-moving reptile climbed out of the water to take advantage of the changed conditions. The eastern snake-necked turtle was filmed laying her eggs at the edge of the newly disturbed gravel, completely unaware the stretch could be days away from being coated with bitumen.
Footage taken by surprised local man Arron Hickson shows the mother meticulously covering her clutch and then trundling off into a nearby paddock. Concerned about the danger the planned works posed to the eggs, he placed an orange cone over the nest and attached a warning sign.
“I watched her for around 20 minutes. There were already at least four in the hole, then she laid another three at least,” he told Yahoo News.
The turtle was spotted near the Clarence River, just outside Grafton, in northern NSW. It's common for the reptiles to be spotted walking across the road as they cross between water sources on farms. But Hickson has never seen one laying eggs before. “To come across her like that was really cool,” he said.
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What will happen with the turtle eggs?
Yahoo News has reached out to Clarence Valley Council which confirmed it is now investigating the matter and there is no immediate threat to the eggs. An exclusion zone will be created around the nest while it seeks advice from an ecologist about how to proceed.
Kane Durrant, the principal ecologist at WILD Conservation, is an expert in relocating turtles as they frequently come into conflict with housing and road construction projects around NSW.
“We do see a lot of roads transecting their habitat. So in times of rain you’ll see a lot of dead turtles on the road,” he told Yahoo News.
When Durrant’s team is called to relocate eggs this often requires an extended period of incubation before they’re moved to safer ground. And after speaking with Yahoo News, he offered to connect Hickson or council with a local turtle expert with the skills to help.
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