Here’s how to safely help turtles cross the road.
Often, when someone spots a turtle crossing the road, the first inclination is to take it back where it came from. “It knows what it’s doing,” says Jeff Hall, amphibian and reptile conservation biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. “You just need to take it across the road and let it go, and understand that it knows where it is and it’s going to survive.”
It’s actually common to see turtles—especially the box, painted, musk and snapping species—slowly making their way across Blue Ridge backroads in spring and summer. They’re not lost, Hall points out. They’re simply moving around to look for mates, expand their range or lay eggs.
But it isn’t easy for a turtle to cross a manmade thoroughfare, and not just because of the danger of oncoming traffic.
“If you have a box turtle in the forest, it can move reasonably quickly across that sort of landscape. They’re able to use their claws to get purchase against the ground, leaf litter or whatever it might be, so they can move,” says Hall. “When they get onto pavement or asphalt, there’s no grip there. … Even some species of snakes that actually could cross a road really quickly have shown that when they come up to a road, they pause and may even take more time to cross it than they would something else because it is a foreign substance to them.”
If you stop to help, says Hall, pull off to the side of the road, completely out of the path of oncoming cars. “I know of several cases in North Carolina where someone stopped, got out to help a turtle across the road, and was hit by a car themselves.”
If possible, handle the animal with light-duty work or garden gloves, and don’t pick it up by the tail. You might injure its vertebrae. With a larger, more aggressive or long-necked species, use a piece of cardboard or a towel to scoot it to safety. “Sometimes what I’ll do if it’s a big snapping turtle is get behind it and sort of shove it with my foot. I’m not kicking it, but I’m sliding it across the pavement because that’s just faster than actually trying to pick it up,” Hall says. “Even box turtles, painted turtles, if it thinks it’s about to be eaten, can try to bite. You have to be careful of the pointy end, as we like to say, so keep track of where the head is.”
Move the turtle in the same direction it was headed. And don’t transport it to a park or other unknown-to-them spot. “Turtles know their landscapes really, really well,” says Hall. “A lot of wildlife do, but especially turtles. When you move them to an entirely new area, they actually start making concentric circles that get bigger and bigger, trying to figure out, ‘Where the heck am I?’ It’s like an alien picked me up and dropped me off in California somewhere. I wouldn’t know where I was.”
Jeffrey Hall
In many cases, state laws also prohibit the release of a wild animal into a natural area as well as taking one home. The latter isn’t a good idea anyway, Hall notes, as turtles can live for decades, with the box species sometimes reaching 100. They also require specific care, including the proper amount of sunlight and heat.
Hall encourages those who encounter a reptile or amphibian to take a photo and record the sighting with a community science app like iNaturalist or HerpMapper to help herpetologists better monitor and manage the populations.
Above all, remember that a wild turtle is exactly that—wild—and that it plays an important role in the ecosystem. “By taking it away,” Hall says, “you remove that animal from a food web and a food chain and its whole role in the local ecology.”
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2025 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!