Turtle Research

With Reflections on Biblical Conservation

Christopher Miller
Senior Thesis
December 6, 2013
Word Count: 8534

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Defense of project
3. General Information about Turtles
4. Materials and Methods
5. Data
6. Discussion
7. Basis for Conservationism
8. Pitfalls
9. Principles of Action
10. Case Study
11. Conclusion
Bibliography

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All Biblical quotations are taken from the New International Version

Acknowledgments
I questioned whether or not it made sense to put acknowledgments on such a short thesis,
but acknowledgments are about the deserving people involved, not the size of the project. And
thanks are certainly due.
First, thanks to the management at the Syringa Trailer Court, and thanks to Tom and JoAnn Trail for letting me do whatever I wanted (within reason) at your respective ponds. I
wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything without your permission, but you were willing
all the way.
Second, thanks to my brother, Nathan, and Rory Wilson. Both of you two were involved
in turtle catching, and, especially, in nest finding. Good eyes, you two.
Third, thanks to Lizze Jeschke for patiently listening to me babble about some of my
ideas in utero, and for doing a fantastic job of editing the final copy (providing that all-important
second pair of eyes).
Finally, thanks to Dr. Wilson, my thesis adviser. I'm a liberal arts student doing a
scientific thesis, which meant that getting me through the project was probably a lot like
encouraging a turtle to cross a road. I needed lots of prodding, and you were there to (kindly)
provide it when I needed it. Thank you.

1. Introduction
The purpose of this thesis is to interact with past research done by Peter Lindeman for the
University of Idaho, break ground for future NSA research on the subject, and lay down basic
Christian principles of conservation, applying them to the practical question of turtle
conservation. As it stands, I have taken some basic population data from the Trail pond and
basic clutch data from the Syringa lagoons, and compared those sets of data to Lindeman's. The
study I will spend interact with, is the one where Lindeman compares population data between
waste-water lagoons at the Syringa Trailer Court, and a natural lake, Middle Findley Lake. Since
the Trail pond is something in between these two (human surroundings, but natural pond), the
comparison may be able to shed light on how direct human interference (waste-water
introduction) may differ from indirect human interference (civilization-setting only). I will also
explain why the Trail Pond may be a doomed population, referred to as a living dead1
population.
At that point I will shift gears and discuss conservationism in its Christian and nonChristian incarnations. I will start by explaining how the origins story of evolution does not
provide a solid philosophical basis for conservationism, whereas Christianity does. I will then
show some of the pitfalls of conservationism which evolutionary thinking leads us into, and will
then lay out a few principles of action for Christian conservationism. Armed with those
concepts, I will use the Trail pond and Syringa trailer court lagoon as case studies on which to
apply Christian Conservation principles in a practical way.
2. Defense of Project
But, to address a basic question first, why turtles? Almost no one will read this thesis,
1. Michael W. Klemens, ed., Turtle Conservation (Na: Smithsonian Institution, 2000), 4.

and with good reason really. It will not exactly be exhilarating reading. Why even bother with
such a mundane venture, especially as a time-consuming, capstone project? There are two
important reasons. First, God thought the world worth creating in its minutest detail, so we
should think it worth the study. Nathan Wilson puts it well:
Look at this squirrel, He [God] says. Do you understand it? Do you know what it means? What
does it tell you about me? Watch its tail snap. You're the only one watching. You and I are alone
in the audience, sharing this scene. What does it remind you of?

How can we say that we take God's word seriously if we ignore or even despise the book
of nature? As Nathan Wilson points out, we have been spoken into existence, so existence itself
is the word of God. If God thought turtles worth the trouble of making, how dare we say they
aren't worth noticing? The world is God's artwork, so the minutest detail in the world is worthy
of total attention (if only we could give it).
Secondly, we have been ordered to husband the natural world. We are the kings of this
garden, this earth, and we cannot take care of what we do not understand. If we do not learn
about our subjects, we can only injure them. It would be like a husband who determines to take
care of his wife, but never speak to her. He will do badly. Uniformed good intentions do as
much harm as good, and if we want to keep habitats intact, we must understand what they are. If
we want to take good care of turtles, we must understand what they require to live. How can
anyone take care of (or love) strangers?
3. General Information about Turtles
Chrysemys picta, or the painted turtle is possibly the world's best studied turtle.2 They
have smooth carapaces, and tend to be dark colored from olive to black (habitat may influence
coloration). Their skin is of a similar color and many have striped coloration (red and yellow),
2. Carl H. Ernst and Jeffrey E. Lovich, Turtles of the United States and Canada, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press: 2009), 184.

especially below the eyes, underpart of the neck, and the tail. Males tend to be smaller, have
longer foreclaws, and fatter, longer tails with the anus positioned outside of the edge of the
carapacial rim. The females tend to be larger, have shorter tails, and have their anus inside of the
carapacial rim. Because of these distinct characteristics their sex (as adults) is easy to identify.3
They are the only turtles in North America that range across the continent, ranging all across the
Eastern United States (though not Florida) and even into Southern Canada. They are not, in
general, found in the dryer regions of the South-western United States, although they do exist
there in isolated patches. They just barely reach down from Canada into Northern Idaho and
Washington.4
The particular sub-species studied was the Chrysemys picta bellii, or the Western painted
turtle, which extends normally from western Ontario across southern Canada to British
Columbia and south to Missouri, northern Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and
Northern Oregon, though it can also be found in a few isolated localities in the Southwestern
United States.5 It is the largest subspecies of C. picta, and it can be easily identified by its very
colorful red plastron which is mostly covered by a multiple-lobed, large black and yellow figure.6
C. picta prefer slow-moving water and shallow habitats, with mucky, soft bottoms, and it
is very tolerant of pollution. Hatchlings and juveniles are even more likely to be found in
shallow water than are the adults, and are more likely to insist upon slow-moving water.7 The
Trail pond is small, very mucky, and never too deep to walk in with waders (meaning no deeper
than five feet), so it is an ideal habitat according to Ernst's description. The Syringa Trailer
3. Ernst, 184.
4. Ibid., 185.
5. Ibid., 185.
6. Ibid., 185.
7. Ibid., 188.

Court lagoons are optimal in the same ways (though it is deeper).

Males and females of C. picta reach sexual maturity at different times and sizes. The
males mature at PLs (plastron length) of 7.0-9.5 cm in about 2-4 years, while the females mature
at PLs of 9.7-12.8 cm in about 6-10 years.8 However, Ernst also commented that as latitude
increases, so do the normal size and age requirements for sexual maturity. Since local
populations of C. picta bellii are far north, we can expect them to be larger than the basic figures
given by Ernst. Mating tends to occur from March to mid-June, but Ernst has observed courtship
happening in August and even September.9
In Northern populations most nesting occurs during late June and early July.10 The
females will dig small holes in the ground with their hind feet, deposit their eggs, and fill in the
holes, moistening them with bladder water. They tend to do this within at least 200 meters of
water, but some populations go further out. Younger females may nest closer to water than older
ones.11 Although many subspecies lay more than one clutch per season, Nussbaum has reported
that C. p. bellii in the Pacific Northwest only lay one clutch per year. These clutches tend to be
larger than the average at 11.9 eggs per clutch.12 It should also be noted that, under identical
conditions, large eggs are more successful at ultimately hatching than smaller eggs.13
Populations of C. picta in Maryland were observed to grow at a faster rate in nutrientrich sewage lagoons, and Lindeman has observed similar findings in populations of C. p. bellii at
STC. Populations of C. p. bellii have been observed to grow at faster rates than other
populations of C. picta because higher latitudes are positively correlated with greater annual
8. Ernst, 196-97.
9. Ernst, 200.
10. Ernst, 201.
11. Ernst, 201.
12. Ernst, 201.
13. Ernst, 202.

growth.14
Timing for hibernation can vary significantly according to climate, and the northern
populations of C. picta sometimes hibernate between five and six months.15 However, some of
the far-north populations of C. p. bellii can remain dormant for over seven months.16 It should be
noted that, for hatchlings, overwintering in the nest is common behavior, especially in the north.
They can do this because they are uniquely designed such that they can endure freezing outside
of their extracellular fluids.17
4. Materials and Methods
We were able to get clutch data on four separate nests which we found around the Syringa
Trailer Court lagoons (STC), in addition to a one (older) failed nest which contained thirteen
dead hatchlings. These were nests that the mother had already abandoned, which we dug up. We
then took took data on egg length and width (to 0.1 mm), and egg weight (to 0.1 gram). We then
put the eggs back into the nest as we found them, and did not look at them again for the duration
of the study.
In terms of population data, we first tried to capture turtles at the Syringa trailer court
lagoon. We brought a dip net, and also tried used seining methods. The turtles were too alert
and too quick for the dip net to be practical. We simply couldn't get close enough before they
spooked and swam away. Seining methods did not work well and were prohibitively timeconsuming to be practical. We could spend hours and catch one turtle (or fail to catch any at all).
The one time I attempted to use the seining method at the Trail Pond (TP), I was unable to catch
anything after trying for three or four hours. The trouble is that the turtles would escape by
14. Ernst, 207.
15. Ernst, 192.
16. Ernst, 193.
17. Ernst, 204.

going in towards the middle of the pond and diving. This made seining from the bank
impractical (they had already moved to the middle), and the middle was too deep and wide for
seining to work well.
Eventually, after emailing Peter Lindeman, we decided to use the hoop trap method to
catch the turtles. This method was far more successful and far less time consuming. I would bait
the hoop trap with a can of tuna usually changing it out every other visit. The hoop trap was
designed so that the turtles could easily find their way in, but (not being terribly clever) would
not be able to find their way out.
I checked the trap every two to three day (with one break because of the Marine Biology
field trip). When new turtles were captured, I marked each turtle by filing a notch into one or
more of its outer scutes, according to a numbering system used by Peter Lindeman. I would then
take data on the turtle's sex, carapace length, width, and height (to 0.1 cm); plastron length (to
0.1 cm); and weight (to the nearest multiple of five grams). I would also record each recapture,
but did not retake measurements on turtle size. Because of the short time period over which the
study took place, I expected to find no significant changes in size.
Clutch data was gathered during late June (when the turtles were nesting), and population
data was taken during late August and September. I stopped collecting data when it got cold and
I was unable to catch them (presumably because they had begun to hibernate). Based on
personal observation, I would also hypothesize that turtles are less likely to be in weedy areas.
This is because I was able to catch fewer turtles in places with lots of blooming vegetation, and I
never saw any in those area. However, I may have had difficulty catching them there more due
to the time of year than the location of vegetation. In terms of seeing them, I may have easily

missed them.
5. Data
Again, clutch data was collected from nests surrounding the STC lagoons. We looked for
nests in a junkyard area, and an abandoned road behind it. The soil in the area was loamy, and
somewhat sandy, and they could be spotted by looking for patches of irregularly colored red dirt
(which could only be found underneath the top layer). Compiling the clutch data based on the
four nests which contained eggs gives us the averages shown below.
All Nests

Egg weight

Egg length

Egg width

Egg #

Nest 1

5.5 mm

29.8 mm

18.6 mm

15

Nest 2

7.1 mm

30.2 mm

20.2 mm

19

Nest 3

6.4 mm

28.8 mm

19.7 mm

14

Nest 4

6.4 mm

28.9 mm

19.5 mm

13

Averages

6.4 mm

29.4 mm

19.5 mm

15.3

SD= 2.63

A quick look at averages for clutch size reveals that the average egg size at STC the year
of this study was similar to the average size for the three years Lindeman collected data. It was
also slightly above the (one-year) MFL average (TP: 15.3; STC: 15.8; MFL: 13.4).18 T-tests
showed that the average number of eggs from this study is not significantly different from the
averages of either Lindeman's older STC data (t-value= -1.23, df = 5.42, two-tailed p-value=
0.27) or MFL data (t-value= 0.35, df = 4.20, two-tailed p-value= 0.74). The t-test is being used
here to determine whether the three different averages actually represent real differences between
the three populations or simply represent the random nature of data gathering (i.e. if I had taken

18. Lindeman, Peter V, Comparative Life History of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) in Two Habitats in
the Inland Pacific Northwest, Copeia, no. 1 (1996): 117.

data a different day/year the means could easily have been easily switched). According to the tvalues from this study, we accept the null hypothesis, which means that we assume there is no
significant difference.
I caught six different turtles, four males and two females, none of which were juveniles. I
never did see any juveniles at the Trail pond. (However, that may simply be due to the difficulty
of capturing them, and may have nothing to do with an actual lack of juveniles). No data is
available on the weight of the two females because they both maxed out the small, one-thousand
gram scale I was using to take data.
Averages

Cara.length

Cara. width

Cara. height

Plastron length Weight

Male

15.1 cm

11.6 cm

5.5 cm

14.0 cm

451.25 g

Female

20.2 cm

15.1 cm

7.5 cm

19.0 cm

NA

I took the data and put it into a Jolly-Seber spreadsheet to try to get an idea of how many
turtles are actually in the TP. The Jolly-Seber statistics model is designed to be able to take
partial capture-recapture data (since the researcher can't catch all the animals), and then provide
the researcher with a good estimate of the actual population numbers. However, the amount of
data we collected was too small to use the Jolly-Seber to get a good population estimate.
6. Discussion
The Syringa trailer court lagoon is in surrounded by human civilization and is nutrified
by raw sewage. Middle Finley Lake is a pond in an arboreal (non-human) setting and is not
nutrified by human action. The TP is something in between in that it is surrounded by human
civilization, but is not nutrified by human action. In his comparative study of MFL and STC,
Lindeman suggested certain things about anthropogenic activity, and we may be able to shed

light on his findings by looking at a third type, an in-between place. It must be carefully kept
in mind, however, that Ernst has said that turtle density in smaller ponds can be greatly reduced
or quite variable, so it is important to take the hypotheses drawn from this pond with a grain of
salt.19 The comparisons may not be fully valid because the TP is considerably smaller than both
STC and MFL.
The PL lengths of the turtles captured in the TP show clearly that the turtles are wellabove the age for sexual maturity according to Ernst, but it is interesting to note that they are also
larger than the size for sexual maturity that Lindeman records at the STC and MFL locations (TP
PL average [male]: 14.0 cm; STC: 126.3mm; MFL: 132.0mm) (TP PL average [female]: 19.0
cm; STC: 178.1mm; MFL: 180.1mm)20. Only one turtle I captured dipped below the averages for
sexual maturity found at the other location (a male, 13.0cm). This make it seem likely that at the
TP, the turtle population is older. Again, the absence of juveniles and smaller turtles cannot be
assumed too readily because, as already discussed, we cannot know what we may have missed,
but the lack of juvenile turtles and smaller adults makes it seem likely.
Lindeman mentioned in his populations study that the STC turtle population was
significantly skewed towards juveniles as compared to the MFL population. He mentions two
factors (not necessarily exclusive) which may explain this age-skewing. First, predation is
virtually a non-entity at STC. The turtles are able to lay nests, and hatchlings are able to get to
the pond mostly free from vertebrate predators, whereas the MFL turtles likely face all the usual
pressures of predation one would find in the wild.21 Second, he mentions that STC is relatively
isolated, and may only have been recently colonized by turtle populations, such that the young
19. Ernst, 210.
20. Lindeman, 117.
21. Lindeman, 121.

are able to survive, not yet being pushed out by intraspecific competition.
The TP population, by comparison, is skewed towards turtles even older than those in the
MFL population (according to their larger sizes). This could suggest a few things. First,
predation may not be a major factor affecting the age of the population of turtles. Since STC and
the TP would face similar predation pressures, one would expect a comparable number of young
turtles at the TP, but that is not the case. Similar predation did not lead to a similar age range
Lindeman's second explanation was to point out differences in the pressures of
intraspecific competition, which is almost certainly higher at the TP. The STC lagoons is filled
with anthropogenic waste which turtle-prey could feed upon. The TP is, by comparison, cleaner
and, presumably, had fewer creatures for the turtles to feed upon.
Additionally, I observed many (and accidentally caught) a goodly number fish at the Trail
pond, but never even saw any at STC. This may mean there is also less interspecific competition
at polluted locations because turtles, but not other species, can endure the pollution (Again, the
evidence for this is anecdotal).
Overall, these observations suggest that age-skewing may have more to do with the
availability of nutrients, and the presence of interspecific or intraspecific competition, than the
presence of (or lack of) predation. It would be worthwhile, as a future project, to examine and
compare the diets of STC, MFL, and TP turtles, in order to see if the TP turtles eat more like the
MFL turtles. If they do, the case for nutrition-based difference would be stronger.
There are two other factors, not mentioned by Lindeman, which may explian the ageskewing between STC, the TP, and MFL. One factor which could greatly influence the agerange of a local population could be the number of clutches laid by each individual turtle. As

Ernst has pointed out C. p. bellii tend to lay fewer clutches, and Lindeman has noted that this is
true. However, Lindeman has also noticed that a number of STC females have laid more than
one clutch, whereas he never observed any of the MFL turtles laying more than one clutch
(Again somewhat anecdotal).22 The abundance of nutrients may impact how many clutches a
female is able to produce in a season. If the STC females are able to feed more and are therefore
able to produce more clutches (and therefore more hatchlings), that could explain why the TP
and MFL populations are older.
The second factor which may explain the lack of juveniles, and the small population of
the TP may be that its turtles have difficulty finding appropriate, good nesting sites. Compared
to the STC location, there is a dearth of good nesting sites at the TP. The STC lagoons have a
goodly number of potential sites in empty fields and the junkyard area nearby their pond. The
TP, on the other hand, is surrounded by bad nesting sites. On one side is a road in a steep valley,
and surrounding most of the rest of the pond is a field that is farmed on a regular basis. The
remaining portion is a small garden/yard area that is only located by the pond obliquely, and is
obstructed by human habitation.
As mentioned earlier, older turtles tend to nest even further away from their habitat than
the younger females. STC turtles nested far away from their pond, in locations considerably
further than the TP turtles would be able to go and still find good nesting sites (unless they got
somewhat lucky, successfully bypassing some human habitation). If they nest far out in the field,
believing it to be suitable nesting ground (and why shouldn't they?), it is very likely that they
could lose their nests due to the human activity of cultivating the field. The danger of plowing is

22. Lindeman, 122.

directly related to whether or not the neophytes overwinter in the nest.23 As already mentioned
C. p. belli tend to do so, which means nest destruction is very likely.
In short, it is possible that the TP is a living-dead population of turtles. Living dead
because the turtles are able to survive, but not reproduce. As Burke notes, Failing to protect a
single life cycle stage will ultimately doom the entire population to extinction.24 If they are
unable to reproduce they will eventually die out (unless their numbers are augmented by
immigrants). Since freshwater turtles are long lived, the reproductive troubles at a location may
not be immediately obvious.25 The fact that there are no known young turtles may simply mean
that we are beginning to see the long-term consequences of defective nesting sites.
On the subject of the dead hatchlings found at STC, it has been noted that hatchlings may
actually do worse in warmer winters, because if the snow melts, they may not have a consistent,
insulating layer of snow to protect them from sharp temperature changes.26 The last two winters
in Moscow have been warmer than the average, which may explain the failed nest. We did not
have consistent snow, and it is possible that the unusual warmth, paradoxically, robbed the
hatchlings of one of their only ways of keeping warm enough.
In short, compared to MFL and STC populations, the turtles in the TP was mature and
large. The TP shares STC's lack of predation, but is more like MFL in terms of the amount of
turtle-prey found in the water. This could suggest that nutritional availability and competition
may have more to do with population numbers favoring older turtles. However, it should also be
noted again that an important difference between the MFL and TP turtles, is that the TP itself is
smaller than the lake studied by Lindeman. It may be that if the pond was bigger it would be
23. Klemens, 161.
24. Klemens, 162.
25. Klemens, 159.
26. Ernst, 205.

more like the STC lagoons. This means that future studies would do well to examine turtle diet
at TP and see if it more closely resembles STC or MFL turtles.
7. Basis for Conservationism
Which brings the thesis into its second part, which seeks to answer the question How
Should We then Live? If there is one thing the above discussion has made clear, it is this: the
activity of man has a great deal of influence over the success and continued survival of turtles.
Realizing the influence we wield should make us ask how we should act. What kind of
responsibility do we bear for their well-being? Before we can discuss a proper Christian
response to the above case study, we must establish some of the basic Christian principles we
should bring to bear on the subject. We also need to clear away much of the bad thinking in the
air since the conservationist movement in America has mostly been the province of Darwinian
secularists.
Conservationism and Darwinism are strange bedfellows. G.K. Chesterton once wisely
observed that on the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane;
but you cannot be human.27 Because evolution places man among the animals and makes
nature chaotic rather than artistic, evolutionary thinking and conservationist thinking fight like
two insects in the jar of the mind. They can still coexist, but only with imaginative mental
acrobatics and deep inconsistencies. The Christian story solves these inconsistencies between
thought and action, and should spur us on towards wiser conservationism.
The first major inconsistency is the problem of value. Our beliefs about the value of
nature should be consistent with our story about the origin of the nature, but, in the case of
evolution, they aren't. As it is put in Redeeming Creation: The great failure of modern
27. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 118.

environmental ethics has been its failure to establish the value of creation.28 The evolutionary
tale might go something like this: In the beginning there was chaos, and out of the chaos
different chaos arose. Millions of species have gone extinct and even the surviving ones have
changed over time so much as to make them unrecognizable. If nothing else, evolution
represents constant flux.
But evolutionists (and especially conservationists), do not see the world as fundamentally
chaotic. One book on turtle conservation seeks (lamenting) to heighten public awareness and
concern for the plight of this ancient order. How tragic it would be for 200 million years of
turtle evolution to all but disappear. [emphasis mine]29 Order? Tragedy? Evolution is all about
change, so this is truly a bizarre non sequiter.
But, like the rest of us, they really love creation because it is lovely. As the forward to the
same book quotes: were they entirely extinct, their shells the most remarkable defensive armor
ever assumed by a tetrapod would be a cause for wonder.30 The sentiment is true. Note that
my purpose is not to quarrel with them about the existence of beauty in nature (it's there), but
simply to ask if their commitment to stabilizing natural beauty is consistent with their origin
story. If nature is actually a shifting, chaotic thing, conservationism is an inexplicable (not to
mention unrealistic) reaction. Regardless of what we say about our philosophical positions, we
behave as if we wanted and needed to find value in creation.31 Sometimes conservationists
argue for their positions on the basis of pragmatism, but pragmatism doesn't ultimately drive the
movement. Instead, conservationists inconsistently desire to preserve nature because they
28. Fred Van Dyke et al., Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 46.
29. Klemens, 4.
30. Klemens, xi.
31. Van Dyke, 25.

recognize (correctly) that extinction is an aesthetic tragedy.

Christians, however, do not believe in nature, a quasi-Deistic phrase which implies a
given world which simply is, and may change however it pleases. Instead, they posit creation,
which implies purposeful, divine art.32 In the beginning God created the heavens and earth
(Gen. 1:1). God saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Gen. 1:31a). These verses
put the loveliness of creation in a whole new light. Since creation is ultimately God's work, it is
a work of purposeful art, not the chaotic, shifting offspring of other chaos. This makes speaking
about the beauty of (say) turtles sensible, since turtles are not mere monsters of nature. Creation
is a (relatively) stable thing, whose artistic value can be found in its intentional nature.
Which brings us to the second major Darwinian problem: man's relationship to this
thing, or the problem of kingship. How are we to respond to the value we find? The origin
story of evolution posits that man is fundamentally an animal, just like any other creature. The
same natural processes which caused everything else to be, caused him, and the same natural
forces that caused him to be will continue to change him until his extinction. Conservationist
thinking, on the other hand, assumes that man has an un-natural responsibility over the natural
world he is supposedly a part of. He is supposed to take care of other species. Thus, they
ultimately give man super-animal lordship over nature. They functionally say: We are animals
and yet must be more than animal. The inconsistency is unacceptable.
The reason that the inconsistency is there is because evolutionists correctly recognize the
extraordinary influence man wields over creation. They desire to rise to the obvious challenge.
Clearly, man is powerful over nature (for good or ill), but why? Their philosophy offers no basis
for such influence. If man is an animal made by natural selection, he must be in conflict with the
32. Van Dyke, 15.

creatures around him, unless he can exploit them or his own existence is tied to theirs in some
way (more on this later). Evolution has always been a process fueled by self-interest, and care
only follows if care serves our own interests in some way. The book Redeeming Creation puts it
well: The inconsistencies of most secular environmental ethics are that they demean human
management of creation while at the same time demanding such management.33 We are
animals, but we have a moral responsibility to rise above the instinctual self-interest which has
always driven us. This is the philosophical equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but really,
philosophy is not supposed to involve sleight of hand.
But now consider Christianity: The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of
Eden to work it and take care of it (Gen. 2:15). Man is called to have federal headship over
creation. He is called to husband creation, and this call to husbandry makes sense of our
extraordinary influence over creation. We are, in fact, different from the animals, and that makes
all the difference for the problem of kingship. The Lord gave us the command the take care of
the world, and we rule over the animals as ministers of God's goodness. Our position of power
in creation is now sensible.
Now is as good a time as any to note that Christian dominion thinking has been much
maligned as giving man license to destroy creation, making her his contemptible wench. But
dominion must be understood correctly before it is dismissed. The charge is to take care of,
and to slowly turn the wilderness into garden. Note closely: this makes abuse of creation a sin.
We are made Imago Dei, and, as such, we should expect man to sub-create and further the artistic
beauty of creation, mimicking our namesake. Therefore husbandry, considered properly, is not

33. Van Dyke, 97.

domineering chauvinism, but kind nurturing.34 We make the world better. To quote Proverbs, A
righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel
(Prov. 12:10). Righteousness in our dominion-taking means that we will consider creation's
needs and seek to meet them. To do less would be cruel and sinful.
So Christianity provides the foundational basis for creation's value, and authorizes man to
take action on the basis of that value. Darwinian thinking offers no objective foundation for
value, and cannot explain the power of man, yet it still maintains that man must care for the
value they see there. Put frankly, the philosophical strain is dangerous.
8. Pitfalls
These two discordant points in Darwinian conservationism bear bad fruit in
conservationist thinking down the line. One area is the unholy alliance of pragmatism and value,
which tends towards alarmism. The (related) other is that the result of making man an animal is
to make his kingship over creation uneasy. Man becomes the dangerous, immature adult child of
nature (he can't really bear that much responsibility) so that rather than giving man the impetus
to make creation better, he is simply given the admonition to not mess anything up. As a
necessary result, most of man's actions are put in a negative light.
First, evolution's schizophrenic attitude towards value, makes them overuse pragmatic
concerns to defend conservationism. Even if a Darwinian scientist likes the natural world, he
can't explain that it is art, and so has a hard time explaining why it should be preserved. To
compensate, scientists frequently look to pragmatism as a basis for a good argument for
conservationism. One strong pragmatic basis is to prove the existence of a coming systemic
crash. If they can find one, they often end up taking on the persona of the prophets of doomsday,
34. E. Calvin Beisner, Where Garden Meets Wilderness (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 102.

Act now or perish! (a form of ad bacculum). This satisfies the needs of evolutionary thinking
by justifying care of nature with self-interest. If we can prove that the death of turtles will lead
to the death of man, we have a pragmatic argument, consistent with evolutionary thinking.
Now, there are pragmatic consequences to conservation failures, but many of the
pragmatic concerns put forth are very oblique at best. Conservationists tend to portray the
biosphere as a poorly organized china shop with cups, saucers, and plates thrown about
haphazardly and perched precariously one upon another. Don't touch anything!and if we do,
we are certain to cause a catastrophic chain reaction which will destroy far more than that one
cup. There is some truth to this kind of alarmism, but just as much falsehood, and the boy can
only cry wolf so many times. The public is saturated with, and to some extent desensitized to,
the magnitude of the environmental crisis. One can push on the environmental compassion
button only so many times before the response begins to fatigue.35 Eventually, people stop
taking books like Ehrlich's The Population Bomb seriously.
All things considered, guilt and panic tend to be unreliable fuels, but they are the only
fuels really justified by evolutionary thinking. Concern for aesthetic value can only be appealed
to at the high cost of consistent thinking. Christian conservationism, in contrast, can be driven
without contradiction, by art appreciation. Evolution needs crisis to justify itself, but Christianity
does not need crisis to recommend action. Creation is lovely, and that beauty alone should make
us want to preserve it. All this to say that while both Darwinian and Christian conservationists
appeal (on some level) to both pragmatism and aesthetic concern. Aesthetic value (the more
reliable argument) is properly considered, the domain of Christian thinking. Christians,
therefore, should avoid the pitfall of cheap alarmism.
35. Van Dyke, 19.

The Christian response to alarmism is environmental humility. We should be wary of

believing that we understand the environment and human needs well enough to force ourselves
upon others politically. Judgmental environmentalism can be ridiculously prideful.36
Conservationists are too quick to demand that we act on behalf of future generations (for the
children!): We're jesting if we consider ourselves capable of planning in light of their
hypothetical future circumstances.37 There is much we do not understand, and alarmists are too
quick to demand action with very little evidential basis. So rather than rely on a high-stakes,
frenetic fear of devastation, we should driven by careful thinking in light of the loveliness of
creation. We don't need to stack the deck, if we're good enough to win without doing so.
Alarmism is also driven by the second major pitfall in Darwinian thinking. Evolution's
schizophrenic attitude towards man's kingship (animal, yet more than animal) makes mankind
the adult child of nature. We've gotten big and influential enough to hurt her, so we are somehow
responsible, but we are still just immature animals who have unprecedented influence. All of our
instincts up to this point have taught us to be self-serving, and we must now think of others?
Darwinian preservationists take this thinking to the extreme, believing that man's interference is
inescapably bad for the world. Darwinian conservationists, on the other hand, hope for an
uneasy truce. On this thinking, all human tinkering tends toward unhelpful interference, and
we're doing great if we simply don't kill our mother (which fits right in with alarmism). It is
action, again, driven by negativity. Don't mess anything up! becomes the less-thanexhilarating battle cry.
But the concept of Christian husbandry makes man, properly speaking, a good force in

36. Beisner, 27-8.

37. Beisner, 33.

creation. The battle cry can be, Reverse the curse and make better to the glory of God!
Human interference then becomes much more than taking care to not injure, but instead,
becomes a matter of making things better. There are two pertinent points here. One, is that man
was given the call to make better, and turn wilderness into garden even before the fall. This
means that the world, as found in its sinless state would still need to be transformed and
cultivated. Human domination for good is a pre-fall concept so human cultivation is not
fundamentally an evil, but a good.38
The second point is that the curse did not take away the good nature of dominion taking,
but put it into sharper focus, making it even more necessary. Note the emphasis: Cursed is the
ground because of you; through the painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you. (Gen. 3:17-18). When man fell, not only man, but
all of creation fell. The earth not only groans, but also rebels against man. In short, creation
itself was perverted along with man, which undoes the unbiblical idea of nature knows best.
We did not mess up a pristine creation after the fall. Something was very wrong even before
man's post-fall influence.39
The caveat to man's good influence is that his cultivating goodness fell along with the rest
of him. Darwinian conservationism assumes that wilderness is better, but the Bible presents a
more complex picture. In the Scriptures, the land's well-being is tied up with ours. When the
land is devastated by God, it reverts back to a wilderness, and man leaves it: The land trembles
and writhes, for the LORD's purposes against Babylon stand to lay waste the land of Babylon so
that no one will live there. (Jer, 51:29). Similar reversal language is used elsewhere to

38. Beisner, 13-14

39. Beisner, 19-21.

describe the land being devastated (Isa. 34:7-15, Jer. 4:11-26). As Beers puts it what Scripture
consistently treats as a curse is the romantic dream of much of the environmentalist
movement.40 Under normal circumstances, when nature is deprived of us, it is actually
deprived. It does not breathe a sigh of relief. However, man can be just as bad for creation as
good. When man is evil, God devastates the land.
Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you
who live in the land: There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.
There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and
bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away. (Hosea 4:1-3)

As we can see, the good of the land is tied to man, and, it should be noted that ecological
devastation is the payment for general sin, not ecological sin specifically. Biblically, the good of
creation and man is tied together.
To draw an analogy. For Darwinists, man can, at best, not wreck the environment as he
finds it. The system was working when we found it, and if we're careful to clean up after
ourselves, we might be able to successfully coexist with nature. Christianity has far more than
coexistence in mind, making us look forwards to the slow, man-driven reversal of the curse.
Christ's already not yet work of restoration makes man more and more capable of fulfilling this
original mandate.41 This means that man can take part in increasing the artistic value of nature.
To draw an analogy to the Bible story of the talents. Darwinists hope to the bury their one talent
and give it back to God uncontaminated, whereas Christians desire to multiply their talents,
slowly making the earth the fruitful place it is supposed to be.
9. Principles of Action
Starting with the foundational principles of value and kingship mentioned, and
40. Beisner, 120.
41. Beisner, 107.

remembering to avoid the pitfalls of alarmism and the adult child paradigm, we can draw some
pertinent principles from the earlier discussion. First is this: if we are called to husband creation,
reverse the curse, and cultivate beauty, we must, as Christians, do scientific research to
understand our charge, and we must listen to scientists who have already done work in these
scientific pursuits. We cannot care for, or make better what we do not understand, and if we
leave a vacuum of good conservationist thinking, it will be filled with Darwinian assumptions.
We must become experts in our own small way.
Which leads naturally to the second call to action. We should cultivate delight in what
God has made, and help others to find the same enjoyment. It is His good art after all. As an
example, while this thesis is being read, I would hope the reader has grown to care about turtles
and about their welfare. He has become interested in this little, dramatic microcosm of the
world. Now, interesting a few people in turtles may seem like it will have no effect, but if we
inculcate a true appreciation of creation in people, we can expect them to begin to act like it, and
we can then hope that the love of God's natural art can work through society like leaven. This
will affect people and their actions on an individual level, which will ultimately have trickle-up
effects upon institutions that make environmental decisions. This might be slower, initially, than
stirring people into a moralistic frenzy, but it will ultimately make for more reliable changes.
Another principle to act by is to remember where there is legitimate room for
disagreement, and to recognize unintentional sin. Here again the call is to humility. There are
big E on the eye-chart kind of areas, and microscopic print areas where tricky wisdom is called
for. If a man was to dump a barrel of muriatic acid on a downhill slope letting it run into his
neighbor's land, we can be sure of where we would stand on his negligence. But how about a

disagreement between agricultural scientists over whether the safe level of fertilizer use in a
given locale is .5 or .6 ton per acre-- is one scientists sinning...?42 Environmentalists are too
willing to go beyond God's law, attaching trumped-up moral terms to whatever they are doing.
The name we have for that is legalism, and God hates it. In the same vein, we must draw a
distinction between presumptuous sin and unintentional sin.43 Ecological mistakes are tolerable
and unavoidable. To supercharge a wisdom issue with moral guilt is dangerous.
It should be noted in passing that a commitment to avoiding false guilt mongering and
legalism will necessarily put Christians at odds with much of the conservationist political
movement as it stands. Most conservationism thus far has been defined in terms of seeking to
establish ever-expanding governmental regulations and rules. Usually, this is driven by legalistic
guilt-mongering, alarmism, and the false belief that we understand the situation well enough to
legislate. Intellectual humility will undermine much of the fervor driving this kind of legislation,
and careful thinkers will not be welcomed by conservationists with open arms. This does not
mean that every environmental law is legalistic, but it does mean that we need to be healthily
skeptical about them.
10. Case Study
So the question of the Trail Pond comes into focus again. If the Trail Pond is a livingdead population, it constitutes an individual instance of failed conservation. A Christian alarmist
with a guilty conscience would demand change, or at least, frown sullenly, shaking his fists at the
passing tractors, but we must be more careful than him. A conservative (i.e. not conservationist)
Christian would smile (maybe with a slight twitch in his soul) and adopt a damn-the-torpedoes

42. Beisner, 85.

43. Beisner, 85.

attitude, but we must be more careful than him.

The most immediate practical way to fix the apparent problem would be to encourage the
creation of what is sometimes referred to as a wetland buffer zone. If close-up cultivation is the
problem, push it back so-as to give the turtles room to reproduce (though it is unclear exactly
how large a buffer zone would need to be to be effective).44 My position is that we cannot insist
upon or even recommend any change to the area surrounding the Trail Pond on the basis of
morality, and that to do so would be to overstep the boundaries of God's law and veer into
legalism.
The first (and most important) problem is the real lack of certainty. There is not enough
data here to make a sure claim. There may be elusive juveniles at the pond, and there may be
enough adequate nesting sites to keep the population healthy. To insist upon a major change like
pushing back the edge of the field would require a far greater standard of certainty. We would
also need to be more certain about what would constitute an effective buffer zone. Anybody
making a hard moral pronouncement on this basis would be bluffing, and that bluffing should be
alien to Christian conservationist humility.
Even if we were certain on both counts, there would still be no basis for moral
condemnation here. It is not a little bit immoral to not have turtles in such a pond. Turning
land into an agricultural field is perfectly lawful and good, and while that action does shrink the
available land that animals have to live in, this reduction is not morally wrong. Even if turtles
were to die out at the Trail Pond, we would be wrong to be angry with the developers. It would
be sad, because turtles are interesting and beautiful, but not all bodies of water need to have a
turtle population. An alarmist might point out that no one drop of rain is responsible for the
44. Klemens, 11.

flood of biodiversity collapse, but that is assuming that a flood is actually coming/happening,
which is far from certain. Again, a dose of Christian humility is a good corrective.
That is how we should live now. But how should we live in the future? If a developer
was familiar with the requirements turtles have for nesting sites, he would be able to take into
account concepts like buffer zones and non-disruptive development practices. When he has the
knowledge and the know-how, he can develop with turtle nesting ecology in mind. This is not
terribly difficult or unattainable. The Synringa trailer court lagoons are a successful example of
housing development, roadway development, and agricultural development not interfering (as far
as we can tell) with the nesting cycles of the turtles. In fact, STC turtles do better, because of
human intervention, so we have a great example of turning the wilderness into a good turtle
garden (sewage notwithstanding). Here we have humans living with turtles, humans being fed
(by the field), and the turtles benefiting from the arrangement. It should be noted that the open
sewage may be a bad environment for other forms of life. Certainly, it isn't great for the people
living around the water, but this is where the concept of slow progress comes in. These goals are
not impractical, and as Christ's work of redeeming the world from sin continues, we can expect
to see man get better and better at cultivating his charge.45
11. Conclusion
In conclusion, comparing the data taken at the TP to the data taken by Lindeman at STC
and MFL has opened up a number of questions, some of which would be worthwhile to spend
some time studying at NSA in the future. For instance, is there a significant difference in what
turtles feed on at sewage ponds like STC and natural ponds like the TP or MFL? If there is,
could that nutritionally affect female turtles such that the size of clutches laid or the number of
45. Beisner, 107.

clutches laid would be materially different? It would also be worthwhile to get more clutch data
at STC, and it would be very worthwhile to try to discover if TP turtles lay eggs in the
agricultural field. Taking more time at TP in an effort to be sure about how many juveniles or
younger turtles are (or aren't) in the pond would either be able confirm or deconstruct the livingdead idea presented in this thesis. These are a just few of the possible directions future thesis
projects at NSA could take.
Again, taking the time to study turtles is worthwhile because God, obviously, thought it
was worthwhile to put them here for us to study: It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to
search out a matter is the glory of kings. (Prov. 25:2) On the flip side, evolutionary thinking
provides no aesthetic basis for giving turtles a second thought (or even a first), and it certainly
doesn't make sense of taking care of them. Christian thinking places man in a unique position
where studying turtles is not only not strange, but is even required. The natural world is a piece
of divine artwork, and if we ignore it, we insult His creative intelligence.
Which, full circle, brings us again to the point of this thesis. As we examine the drama of
turtles, we begin to understand, and so can begin to care. To know is to love, and it is love that
motivates to right action. This is why Christian conservationism is something entirely different
from usual Darwinian conservationism. One group is an intellectually schizophrenic, guiltdriven people, planted shakily on the skinny branches of science, forcefully (and fearfully)
demanding the attention of the world's governments. The other is a wonder-driven, interested
group of people, quietly learning and working through the culture around them like leaven,
slowly but with potency. Christianity has always properly been about changing minds and
hearts, and has only used the sword to its own detriment. Christian conservationists should take

the same approach to the governance of the natural world. As Redeeming Creation puts it: If
Christian environmentalism is nothing but the Sierra Club with prayer and fellowship, does the
world really need it?46 Our most effective weapons here, as always, are our love for God, and
our consequent love for his works. It is from that basis that we can really encourage right

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Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.
Ernst, Carl H., and Jeffrey E. Lovich. Turtles of the United States and Canada. 2nd ed.
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press: 2009.
Klemens, Michael W., ed. Turtle Conservation. Na: Smithsonian Institution, 2000.
Lindeman, Peter V. Comparative Life History of Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) in Two
Habitats in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Copeia 1996, no. 1 (1996): 114-130.
46. Van Dyke, 133.

Van Dyke, Fred, David C. Mahan, Joseph K. Sheldon, Raymond H. Brand. Redeeming Creation:
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environmental action, and can really expect those actions to have lasting results.