Innovative ‘turtle-tunnels’ keep turtles and eastern quolls safe

Australian Community Media

The Booderee National Park has built ‘turtle tunnels’ to allow eastern long-nosed turtles to freely travel between waterholes while a fence protects endangered eastern quolls. Video by WWF Australia.

Transcript

00:00Buttery Botanic Gardens and the fence that we've recently built around the Botanic Gardens

00:07site to help with re-establishing the eastern quoll on the mainland, it sits within an ancient

00:15migratory route for the eastern long-necked turtle, a freshwater turtle, that's found

00:20throughout this landscape.

00:22And what we don't want to do when we build these conservation fences is impact on some

00:28of the other species that are already living here.

00:30We came up with a bit of a competition to design something that would allow turtles

00:36to migrate across this fence line without allowing foxes or our quolls to get in or

00:42out.

00:43It looks a bit like a bathtub.

00:44It's got a mesh lid and a grate that goes down through the middle to allow turtles to

00:49swim under it but not allow foxes and other species to get into it and migrate through

00:55the fence line.

00:57So this is an eastern long-necked turtle and these guys have just been using our turtle

01:02tunnels.

01:03So they're using these tunnels to get through the fence.

01:05They can get through safely through this pond without any foxes or cats coming through.

01:10So you can actually see his nice long neck coming round here as he hides his little head

01:18just in the corner there.

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