Pearson McGovern

African Chelonian Institute

It is widely assumed that future climatic conditions, alongside their effect on local environments, will result in either a change in how species use their habitats or in a shift in species distributions. The Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to experience drastic changes in its average aridity and overall climate in the coming decades...

The Sahelian Flapshell Turtle, Cyclanorbis senegalensis (family Trionychidae) is the most widely distributed of the African members of the trionychid subfamily Cyclanorbinae, occurring across the sub-Saharan Sahel region from Senegal to Ethiopia. It is a moderate sized, sexually size-dimorphic freshwater turtle with females (curved carapace length...

In April 2020, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic (COVID-19), our team was made aware of active sea turtle poaching near a major fishing port, Joal, in central Senegal. This discovery led to monthly surveys and a greater overall vigilance of the beaches and lagoons (where many of the turtles were being butchered and their carapaces stashed to cle...

The chelonian fauna of West Africa is relatively understudied and experiencing a multitude of threats. Moreover, the IUCN Red List status of several African species is both outdated and, we believe, underestimated. Herein, we cover projections for freshwater turtle and tortoise status trends in West Africa over the next decade. This geographic prio...

The effects of indoor rearing versus the conventional method of solely outdoor head-starting on post-release cover and burrow use of juvenile Mojave desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii), a threatened endemic species, were investigated. We found that partially indoor-reared tortoises exhibited similar post-release behaviours when compared to both s...

Desert tortoise populations continue to decline throughout their range. Head-starting (the captive rearing of offspring to a size where they are presumably more likely to survive post-release) is being explored as a recovery tool for the species. Previous head-starting programs for the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) have reared neonate...

Captive rearing conservation programs focus primarily on maximizing post-release survival. Survival increases with size in a variety of taxa, often leading to the use of enhanced size as a means to minimize post-release losses. Head-starting is a specific captive rearing approach used to accelerate growth in captivity prior to release in the wild....