Turtlemania Celebration and Research at County Line on the Lake in Austin

AUSTIN, Texas, May 16, 2019 Turtlemania is on again!

County Line BBQ restaurants will again celebrate its turtle customers—and human ones, too—with Turtlemania on Thursday, May 23, 2019 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at County Line on the Lake, 5204 FM 2222.    Turtlemania will live up to its motto of "Drink Beer. Save Turtles" by offering $10 pints (with $4 refills) of local Hops & Grain Brewing's lager River Beer—in a souvenir pint glass. Proceeds from the beer sales will go to the Turtle Survival Alliance's North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group.

Turtlemania celebrates World Turtle Day, May 23, 2019 to "bring attention to, and increase knowledge of and respect for, turtles and tortoises, and encourage human action to help them survive and thrive."

At County Line, that equates to two days of research by the Turtle Survival Alliance when 20+ volunteers from all over the country will research and tag turtles on May 22 and 23, 2019.

County Line on the Lake sits on Bull Creek, right off Lake Austin. Its turtles are so numerous and so healthy that the TSA's North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group has done research at the restaurant the past three years on six species: Texas river cooter, Texas map turtle, Guadalupe softshell, red-eared slider, eastern musk turtle, and the eastern snapping turtle. County Line is one of only three sites in Texas researched by this group.

The public is welcome to watch (and talk to) the North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group in action from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on May 22 and May 23, as volunteers and divers from all over the country:

• capture the turtles and bring them to land
• tag new turtles with a small micro-chip
• examine new and those tagged from 2016 - 2018 (nearly 700 unique turtles representing six native species) which includes measuring, weighing, and determining the sex and the health of the turtles
• release the turtles back into the lake

"Many of the species we capture at County Line provide ecosystem services that are extremely important," says Eric Munscher, Director of the Turtle Survival Alliance's North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group. "From the Texas River Cooter eating tons of vegetation to the Eastern Musk and Texas Map turtles eating macroinvertebrates, to the Eastern Snapping turtle eating carrion and a host of other things—turtles are important overall to the ecosystem. They are eaten throughout their life history (providing food to a variety of other wildlife), and in turn are voracious eaters themselves. As a whole the turtle assemblage at County Line may indeed act as a keystone species. The large amount of turtles present is a good sign of ecosystem health."

"The concept behind the research is long-term (15+ years) population monitoring and modeling, to see over time how healthy they are, how many turtles are using the habitat of each species, what the sex ratios are, the percent survivability over time (how long they are living within the ecosystem), growth, diet, etc. We plan to visit County Line and its turtles twice a year in an effort to get more important data from this amazing turtle assemblage."

Why save turtles? "Turtles are extremely important to conserve in the wild because they are extremely important to the ecosystems in which they live. Without the turtles present certain ecosystem functions do not occur and as such the ecosystem is damaged. Some species of turtles are known as keystone species or even ecosystem engineers (Gopher tortoise is a good example) where it is known that over 400 species of plants, insects, and animals rely on this species for some aspect of their life history." Munscher adds.

"With a family tree that is 300 million years old, turtles have roamed the earth virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. Unfortunately, these remarkable reptiles are now facing extinction. Within the next 20 years, as many as one-third of the world's 300 species of tortoises and freshwater turtles may be gone due to poaching for the international black market. At least ten species are now extinct in the wild and exist only in captive breeding programs."

County Line on the Lake is located at 5204 FM 2222 in Austin, Texas. Visit http://www.countyline.com or follow the County Line on the Lake on Facebook for updates on all the restaurant's events, Happy Hours and specials. Call 512-346-3664 for more information.

The Turtle Survival Alliance's mission is to transform passion for turtles into effective conversation action through a global network of living collections and recovery programs. The TSA's North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group is composed of professional scientists, students, and interested members of the public who want to make a difference. Visit http://www.turtlesurvival.org/
for more information.

SOURCE County Line BBQ

Related Links

http://www.turtlesurvival.org