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Gopher Tortoise Successfully Rehabbed and Released

January 15, 2025
Gopher Tortoise Face

A gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) that had been in rehab for 164 days with our partners at CROW has been successfully rehabbed back to full health and was released back into the wild at SCCF’s Dayton Preserve.

This tortoise was originally brought into CROW in July 2024 when it was found on the side of the road with shell fractures most likely caused by a vehicle collision. After months of recovering from its initial injuries and a respiratory infection, the tortoise was released on our Dayton Preserve near an abandoned burrow to give it a head start.

The Dayton Preserve, which is closed to the public to protect wildlife habitat, offers open, upland habitat that is critical for gopher tortoises because of the grasses and low-hanging shrubs that grow in that environment and the unhampered sunlight for thermoregulation.

Though this was a great ending for this tortoise’s story, not all are this lucky. Millions of animal road mortalities occur every year in the US. Bigger projects such as building wildlife crossings over highways help greatly, but lowering road mortalities can start with you by monitoring your speed and scanning for wildlife as you drive.

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