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North Louisiana Refuges Complex: Freshwater Turtle Inventory

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NORTH LOUISIANA REFUGES COMPLEX: FRESHWATER TURTLE INVENTORY USFWS Award No: F17PX01556 John L. Carr, Aaron C. Johnson & J. Benjamin Grizzle November 2020 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 4 Inventory and Monitoring Branch for USFWS Award No. F17PX01556, “Freshwater Turtle Inventory of the North Louisiana Refuges Complex”. In addition, this report incorporates data from other, complementary projects that were funded by a variety of sources. This has been done in order to provide a more fulsome picture of knowledge on the turtle fauna of the refuges within the Complex. These other projects were funded in part by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Federal Aid, through the State Wildlife Grants Program (series of projects targeting the Alligator Snapping Turtle and map turtles). Other sources include data collected for grant activities funded by USGS-BRD (Cooperative Agreement No. 99CRAG0017), funding from the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation beginning in 1998, funding directly from LDWF (2000-2002), The Nature Conservancy (contract #LAFO_022309), Friends of Black Bayou, the Turtle Research Fund of the University of Louisiana at Monroe Foundation, and the Kitty DeGree Professorship in Biology (2011-2017). U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel helped facilitate our work by granting access to all parts of the refuges at various times, and providing a series of Special Use Permits over 20+ years. We acknowledge Lee Fulton, Joe McGowan, Brett Hortman, Kelby Ouchley, and George Chandler for facilitating our work on refuges over the years; in particular, we thank Gypsy Hanks for long-sustained support and cooperation, especially during the course of the current project. James and Treasa Barrett kindly provided access to Handy Brake NWR via private property. Many students and former students helped with fieldwork, and we gratefully acknowledge their help: Eli Greenbaum, Phillip Paul, Darah Coley, Michelle Tham, Amanda Rosenzweig, Jason Hatfield, Jason Courtney, Lori White, Lauren Besenhofer, Amity Bass, Sam Holcomb, Mitch Ray, Charles Battaglia, Lisa Brown, Clayton Faidley, María Blanco-Pérez, Ashley Triplett, Sonia Morrone, Gabrialle Gonzalez, Amy Shook, Natalia Rivera, Aaryn Letson, Chris Rice, Nora Smith, and Matthew Reid. Fellow faculty members helped at various times in a variety of ways, including Drs. Neil Douglas, Joydeep Bhattacharjee, Sean Chenoweth, Kim M. Tolson, and Ricky Fiorillo. External colleagues and collaborators on earlier projects we thank include Michael Dreslik, Jeff Boundy, Mike Ewert, and J. Brent Harrel. A number of people helped with useful information about turtle species and the environment in the northern region of the state, including Bob Rickett, Hank Ray, Charles Wilson, Martha Ann Messinger, and George Patton. Jeff Barnhill helped with photo documentation of the Southern Painted Turtle at Irvine Lake. 2 INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND The four refuges sampled are located in three contiguous parishes, Morehouse, Ouachita, and Union. These components of the North Louisiana Refuges (NLR) Complex are located on both sides of the Ouachita River as it flows south out of Arkansas. Black Bayou Lake NWR and Handy Brake NWR are east of the river, D’Arbonne is entirely west of the river, and Upper Ouachita NWR straddles the river. All four refuges occupy a location along the western margin of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley where it meets more upland areas associated with the Upper West Gulf Coast Plain Ecoregion (TNC #40), or South Central Plains (Daigle et al., 2006). Within refuge boundaries, there is relatively little upland area and the available water bodies that provide habitat for the aquatic turtle species occupy lower elevation sites more closely associated with the floodplains. In spite of this, the upland areas provide habitat for critical aspects of the life cycle or annual activities. All female turtles seek terrestrial sites for egg laying. In addition, two of the aquatic species (Mississippi Mud Turtle and Western Chicken Turtle) are known to estivate and overwinter on land, sometimes at some distance from the water and for months-long periods (McKnight et al., 2015; Meshaka et al., 2017). For a wide spectrum of North American freshwater turtles, including all 10 of the genera present in northern Louisiana, Steen et al. (2012) recommended the width of a terrestrial buffer around water bodies of 93 m for 50% coverage and 198 m for 90% coverage of nests—this would encompass habitat for nest sites, females in search of nest sites, and hatchling dispersal from the nest site to water. Fourteen species of turtles are known from the northern region of Louisiana in the project area (Boundy and Carr, 2017). A fifteenth species (Graptemys geographica) was recorded based on only one juvenile specimen from the 1960s, and it was recently considered extirpated after 55+ years without any additional records (Carr et al., 2020). The 14 species are divided among four families of turtles: the softshell turtles (Trionychidae), mud and musk turtles (Kinosternidae), snapping turtles (Chelydridae), and the pond and river turtles (Emydidae) (Table 1). Five of these aquatic turtles—Western Chicken Turtle (S2; Deirochelys reticularia miaria), Alligator Snapping Turtle (S3; Macrochelys temminckii), Ouachita Map Turtle (S3; Graptemys ouachitensis), Razor-backed Musk Turtle (S4; Sternotherus carinatus), Smooth Softshell (S3; Apalone mutica)—are listed as Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) in the current Louisiana Wildlife Action Plan and appear as focal species for Research and Survey efforts (Holcomb et al., 2015). This diverse array of aquatic turtles (13 of 14) occupies the complete spectrum of available aquatic habitats from large, lotic rivers to various lentic bodies of water including extensive swamps and lakes down to the size of small, ephemeral wetlands. In addition, one of the 14 species is a terrestrial species inhabiting forested areas (Three-toed Box Turtle). All of these habitats are available on NLR Complex properties. Early work on turtle communities within Louisiana did touch on the northern part of the state, but did not include our focal area (Cagle and Chaney, 1950). Sloan and Taylor (1987) were the first to focus on a local species at a site that is now part of Black Bayou Lake NWR; followed by a series of papers on the Alligator Snapping Turtle from the immediate environs of the refuge (Harrel et al., 1996, 1997; Harrel and Stringer, 1997). We began working at the property now incorporated in Black Bayou Lake NWR in 1996 and it has been a major focus of our lab’s 3 research, as well as a local site convenient for outdoor activities with students. We have had funding for and focused on the ecology of the Alligator Snapping Turtle, resulting in several publications (Carr et al., 2011; Holcomb and Carr, 2011a, 2011b, 2013) and project reports (Carr et al., 2007, 2010). Other publications and reports have included data on turtles we collected at Black Bayou Lake NWR (Steen et al., 2012, Carr and Tolson, 2017), or have been part of a more wide scale project (Dreslik et al., 2017), or were focused on other species, such as map turtles (Carr, 2001; Carr et al., 2020). In addition to the extensive work over a long period at Black Bayou Lake NWR, we were involved with a multi-year project to survey the herpetofauna of Upper Ouachita NWR in the region of the Mollicy Farm wetland restoration project from 2009- 2013, which included a substantial amount of effort on aquatic turtles (Carr et al., 2013). With this background, we felt well positioned to work on a NLR Complex turtle survey. Objectives • inventory the freshwater turtle species for each of these four refuges by sampling the spectrum of water body types available on each refuge o Black Bayou Lake NWR o D’Arbonne Bayou NWR o Handy Brake NWR o Upper Ouachita NWR Challenges to Achieving the Objectives The weather and Ouachita River level proved the greatest obstacles to accessing major parts of Upper Ouachita NWR and D’Arbonne NWR for long periods into the active season in both 2019 and 2020. The previous year, in 2018, extremely low water levels due to a Ouachita River drawdown severely limited boat launch access in the same areas. Handy Brake NWR access proved to be a challenge after the parish road on the east side of the refuge was closed to public use in early 2018. We later gained access through the Barrett property after the University agreed to and signed a liability waiver. Black Bayou Lake NWR had no problems with access; however, we experienced some delays due to boat repairs. Study Sites Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge (BBLNWR) lies between Bayou DeSiard and a Pleistocene Terrace extending south from the Bastrop Hills in Ouachita Parish. Black Bayou Lake is the central feature of the refuge and is a bald cypress-tupelo swamp that encompasses roughly 2000 acres (910 ha). The lake is composed of a backswamp and a rimswamp. The backswamp area of the central and western lake area would have experienced seasonal water fluctuations and been subject to flooding from Bayou DeSiard (Wang, 1952; Saucier, 1994). The western portion of the lake is bounded by the Louisiana-Arkansas-Missouri Railway (UPRR 2005), which was completed and operational as of 1908 connecting Monroe, Louisiana to Hamburg, Arkansas. In this area, the railroad causeway dams up the western portion of the lake and contains a water control structure operated by the City of Monroe. Previously, water flowed freely between adjacent areas of the lake and Bayou DeSiard at Hanna’s Run by way of 1.5 m culverts (Sloan and Taylor 1987)—Alligator Snapping Turtles were found moving back 4 and forth between lake and bayou. A new control structure was put in service as of February 1999, and water is able to flow from the lake into the bayou.
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