Tuscany
I have always been particularly fascinated by Tuscany. Not only, but also because of the turtles. It is almost 600 kilometers from Lake Constance to the first habitats. So ideal as a "short-term goal" for studying my favorite animals.
In Tuscany there are three habitat types, the pine forests near the sea with the offshore sand dunes, ...
... Macchia areas along river valleys ...
... and sparse stone and cork oak forests with low undergrowth.
Even in my youth the turtles were common in these areas. This has changed extremely in the following years due to urbanization and the spread of agricultural use. In particular, in the dune areas near the sea, which are heavily frequented by tourism, and in the adjacent pine forests, which are widely used by tourists as picnic areas, only a few turtles were to be found. Only in areas that are unsuitable for tourism and agriculture due to their location or nature were more or less stable island populations able to maintain.
Since the end of the 1990s, however, these deposits have also largely been extinct. Not only through the further destruction of the habitat due to agricultural or tourist use. Not even through natural disasters, such as the annually recurring fires or the river habitats that are repeatedly washed away by extreme floods.
In fact, for many years it has been the increasing number of wild boars that have been wiping out these last turtle populations. When looking for something to eat, wild boars plow over large areas of the earth and also find turtles here that they eat along with their bone shell. In every habitat there are extremely many large-scale digging tracks from wild boar flocks. In the past, parts of bone armor or half-eaten turtles were found in these churned-up areas. Today you don't see that anymore. Where nothing lives anymore, nothing can be eaten either. The sharp increase in the number of porcupines is also noticeable. The farmers have been protecting their fields with electric fences for several years.
As around the sea port of Olbia in Sardinia, wide-brimmed turtles from Greece were released by pre-Christian seafarers in the port of Livorno in Tuscany. However, the "Livorno population" has been deprived of most of their habitat by massive tourism and extensive road construction for many decades. Only a few years ago, isolated animals of the wide-brimmed turtles, which previously existed within a radius of 30 kilometers around the seaport, lived next to the native Thhermanni in protected areas near the sea that were protected by the Corpo Forestale. There it is not specifically the turtles that are protected, but nature in its entirety. Like many other protected areas, however, these are primarily bird sanctuaries. Many species of birds live here all year round.
Migratory birds use these as winter quarters or summer nesting sites. Originally I thought that the wide-brimmed turtles would have good prerequisites to form more stable populations again. Even if these would be severely restricted by the island-like protected areas. As I had to find out in the past few years, this is unfortunately not the case. Despite an intensive search, I haven't found a single broad-brimmed turtle in several areas where I knew of residual occurrences.
In the 1990s I measured and weighed turtles regularly in spring and autumn in what was then still an intact, relatively pristine turtle area. To make it easier to classify the turtles by age, I have collected several animals from the laying area. The exact age of tortoises up to six years old was easily possible thanks to the large number of comparative specimens.
Unfortunately, the turtles have already been exterminated there by the wild boars.
