Five First Records from a Half-Century Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) Communal Nesting Aggregation: Predation, Mortality, Nesting Phenology, and a Decade of Nest Protection

Damian Anthony Vraniak, Christina Cherie Vraniak, Daybreak Sage Vraniak, Arendaki Sage Vraniak

We describe a half-century communal nesting aggregation of the Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta), a species of conservation concern, at a single restored prairie–savanna site along a tributary of the Namekagon River in northwest Wisconsin, USA, monitored since the 1970s and protected with successive structures since 2015, and we report five natural-history findings from the site that are, to our knowledge, first records for the species: (1) nest predation by American Badger (Taxidea taxus), the first record for Wisconsin; (2) embryo survival after multi-day nest flooding; (3) egg predation by Prairie Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus bairdii); (4) egg damage and hatchling entanglement, including carapace deformation, caused by the roots of nest-site vegetation; and (5) predation on emerging hatchlings by Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus). The site is used by five turtle species, with Wood and Snapping turtles documented for at least 50 years. From 2014 through 2026, annual Wood Turtle nest counts averaged ca. 25/yr, and sustained nest protection markedly reduced predation, while the concentration of eggs and hatchlings subsidized a broad predator community (>40 individuals of ≥17 vertebrate taxa documented during the 2025 emergence). Daily surveys across the 2026 nesting season (25 May–13 June) recorded 171 turtle sightings, including 143 Wood Turtles arriving in discrete, partly rain-associated pulses; three independent approaches placed the number of nesting females near 40, of the same order as 2014–2015 radio-telemetry results from the site. We situate these first records within the aggregation's nesting phenology, multispecies use, and a decade of nest protection, and argue that the same concentration of eggs and hatchlings that makes a protected communal ground valuable for recruitment also exposes it to a broad and partly novel predator community, requiring active, adaptive protection—sustained here through a durable family–agency partnership.