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07/05/2017 07:00 AMWhen Pam Meier was a little girl, a box turtle came to her yard and she and her family kept him for a few weeks before letting him go. They fed it small fruits and worms and each summer he returned like clockwork, she says.
Now, Pam has a house filled with turtles—even the ping-pong table is covered. She and more than 32 turtles take up residence in Madison where she has lived for the last 26 years with her husband, Giovanni, and three daughters Katherine, 22, Eva, 22, and Danica, 19. Pam serves the community as a turtle rehabilitator. In addition to the turtles, they also have goats, dogs and chickens.
Her love of animals and nature, she says stems from her background and childhood.
“My parents were both teachers,” she says. “My mom was an elementary school teacher and my father was a professor of biology at Trinity.”
Pam says that there are many naturalists in her family including her father and her grandfather who was a guide in Maine.
“I just always liked animals but also always liked art, so I was torn between doing art and zoology,” says Pam. “I came down on the art side—I went to Loomis Chafee for high school—and then I went to Wesleyan for college for art and American studies, but I always really loved environmental stuff.”
Pam has started several environmental education groups for kids including one after school program called the Pond Project, which she helped institute after recess was eliminated for 5th and 6th graders that meets at the Brown Middle School.
The Pond Project was something she started when her elder daughters, twins Katherine and Eva, were students at Brown. Afterward, when they stared high school, she started thinking about how else she could get involved. Her mind turned to the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection’s (DEEP) wildlife rehabilitation program.
“I thought, ‘Well that would be great, I would love to do that because I am always coming across wildlife and it’d be a good way to help,’” says Pam.
She started on the path to becoming a wildlife rehabilitator and passed the entrance exam before tabling the idea while her daughters went through high school.
When Katherine and Eva were seniors in high school, she decided to revisit the idea and picked a species to rehabilitate.
“I couldn’t decide what animal I wanted to do, because I like all animals, and then I went to a seminar at the Turtle Rescue League, and had an aha moment,” says Pam. “I always loved turtles as a kid. They are one of few species that are almost all in decline.”
Pam takes in all kinds of turtles in the area including box turtles, painted turtles, diamondback terrapins, snapping turtles, and spotted turtles.
“We live in an area that is a hotbed of turtles that have been wiped out,” says Pam. “We just have all kinds of turtles here that aren’t anywhere else, so there is a unique need for it. I’ve only been doing it three or four years, but it gets busier and busier every year as people find out about me because there aren’t many people doing turtles.”
The job is both time- and money-consuming and, as a volunteer, Pam doesn’t receive any compensation for her work. Apart from herself, Pam knows only one other turtle rehabilitator in the state, and one more person that is in the process of learning how to be a rehabilitator.
“One thing that people should know about rehabbers is that it’s incredibly difficult to get one on the phone most of the time,” says Pam. “It is exhausting, expensive, pretty nearly full-time work during breeding season, and many people are overwhelmed by the number of calls they get from the public, much less the number of animals they’re already caring for, and just don’t answer unless they have room for more. I would encourage people not to give up!”
Pam says that her whole family is involved with her role as a turtle rehabilitator.
“Thank God for my family,” she says. “My husband, he is like a saint…He helps so much.”
She says her daughters all pitch in as well, in particular her daughter Danica.
“I’d be really lost around the house without them,” says Pam. “They’re very patient.”
Pam says that there is an immense amount of information that the public is not aware of in regard to turtles.
“It’s a big conservation species right now and I think it’s really important that people pay attention to them,” says Pam.
She says that she learns new things every day about turtles—and since she has started, has uncovered a wealth of information through experience, lessons from her research and mentors such as Kathy Michelle ( a veteran rehabber from New York) and her friends at the Turtle Rescue League in Southbridge, Massachusetts.
“I knew nothing really about them, I’ve always been in love with turtles, but didn’t realize how little I know about turtles until I started this,” says Pam. “And I’m constantly amazed at how little the public knows.”
For example, Pam says that often, people think that if they see an injured turtle, they should just let it go if it looks like a minor problem or if it looks like a lost cause.
“You should always rescue an injured turtle and get it to help. They can die from really minor things that look incidental and non-life threatening or if it is in the right spot or a fly gets into them,” says Pam. “They can also survive unbelievably horrific injuries.”
This all depends on whether they get the right care or not. She says also that it is important to know that a veterinarian is not the first place that people should take an injured turtle; instead, they should contact a rehabilitator immediately.
“People think that vets are always the best place to take an injured reptile, but they usually are not,” says Pam. “A rehabber can provide all the basic care that the animal needs. Most vets know very little about wild reptiles and they are only a small handful of vets in our state that know anything about wild turtles.”
She suggests that people do more to inform themselves about turtles and how to treat them if you find them in the wild. For instance, many people find turtles in the wild and bring them home as pets. Pam noted that not only should any wild turtle be kept as a pet, some turtles are endangered in some areas. She says it is important to learn how to treat a turtle if found in a bad situation, however.
“I think we should have more people do little talks to either organizations or schools to spread the basics of how do you recognize this or that about the turtle,” says Pam. “Almost all are in decline even if they are not yet on endangered species list.”
In addition to turtle rehab, Pam runs environmental education programs at Polson and Brown middle schools; serves on the Board of the Madison Land Conservation Trust, the Board of Education, and the Bauer Park Advisory Committee; and co-leads the summer camp at Platt Nature Center in Killingworth. She also enjoys making woodcuts, hiking, and spending time with her family.
For more information you can visit Pam’s Facebook page The Turtle’s Back (www.facebook.com/theturtlesback), where she makes educational posts on turtles and turtle rehabilitation. More information on turtles in Connecticut can also be found on the DEEP website www.ct.gov/deep.