GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A rare tortoise species native to Madagascar is going to get some help from the John Ball Zoo.
For years, the Grand Rapids zoo's conservation team has tracked regional turtle populations, safely raising hatchlings in captivity before releasing them into the wild and monitoring their movement through radio telemetry.
The data on their distribution and survival can be used to determine best practices for conservation.
"I love being out in the field," said Faith Kuzma, the field conservation coordinator for John Ball Zoo. "It feels like you're on a scavenger hunt."
A combination of transmitters, receivers and antennas, radio telemetry is a "two-part system" that works like a game of "hot and cold," Kuzma said.
Here, a researcher holds a beeping receiver whose antenna is fine-tuned to find transmitters, which emit specific frequencies and have been glued to the backs of turtles. A soft beep means the turtle and its transmitter is far away. A loud beep means they're close.
"Then you can walk right up on the turtle and see what they're up to," Kuzma said.
The process of protecting and tracking these reptiles can be replicated around the world, regardless of country, regardless of species.
A critically endangered species, the radiated tortoise is native to Madagascar and only lives on the country's southern coast.
In 2018, a series of confiscations from the illegal wildlife trade brought around 20,000 of these long-living little guys into the care of the Turtle Survival Alliance, a global conservation group.
Now, the alliance is in the process of returning these tortoises to their native habitat, a type of arid shrubland referred to as a spiny forest.
On Monday, Kuzma will leave for a month-long expedition in the African country, her research on turtles and telemetry recruited around the world.
"The turtle conservation world is a small world," she said.
During the "whirlwind" trip, Kuzma will stop at several"tortoise survival centers" created through partnerships between the Turtle Survival Alliance and local communities. These centers keep thousands of radiated tortoises in "soft-release pens" that prep them for their full return to the wild.
Kuzma and the team will also scout new locations for survival centers and, through radio telemetry, will monitor the health of the tortoise populations that have already been released.
"If you're interested in survival or turtle movements, tracking a turtle with some sort of frequency is going to be really helpful in giving you those answers, and that applies to species across the globe," Kuzma said.
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While the radiated tortoise may be a species foreign to Michigan, it's survival, the researcher says, should still matter to people in this state.
"There is a lot of validity in preserving diversity across the globe," Kuzma said.
"Consider biodiversity to be like an airplane," she said. "If one screw falls out of the airplane, you're probably fine. But at a certain point, if you keep losing these different species, or if you keep losing screws out of your plane, something catastrophic is going to happen."
In spite of traffickers who try to steal and sell the rarity and beauty of the radiated tortoise, people like Kuzma believe in its value to the wild world and all the beings that live in it.
"I'm definitely a person that needs to feel like I'm making a difference in what I do," she said.
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