Wellfleet's Terrapin Guardian Angel

Newcomers to Wellfleet’s Lieutenant Island occasionally complain about the bumpy, unpaved roads in this Cape Cod vacation spot. But when they meet Don Lewis following a diamondback terrapin on its way to nest in the sandy shoulder, they begin to view the potholes differently.

Lewis was a senior intelligence officer for the Department of Defense before he retired to Cape Cod in 1998. As the “Turtle Man of Wellfleet,” this former undercover man does everything he can to keep the spotlight on the species he’s working to protect.

Before Lewis arrived, summer residents were unaware that these shy, colorful reptiles were protecting their eggs from foxes and raccoons by nesting in people’s access roads and yards. Now homeowners are slowing down their cars and postponing road maintenance while the turtles nest and hatch. “People are willing to put up with a few inconveniences to protect ‘their’ turtles,” Lewis says.

Lewis wasn’t thinking about turtles when he retired. “I thought I’d spend my time writing and fishing,” he recalls. In an effort to get involved in his new community, he volunteered at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature center run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. There he learned that Wellfleet (pop. 3,129) hosts America’s northernmost population of diamondback terrapins—a once-common species, listed as “threatened” in Massachusetts. Their decline has experts worried from New England to Texas.

Sanctuary director Bob Prescott told Lewis the terrapins also serve as a “signal species,” offering early warnings about threats to coastal ecosystems. For 20 years Prescott had relied on volunteer help to track terrapin activity. Lewis picked up where the last volunteer had left off, walking the beach in search of turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs. At first he would rush any terrapins he found to the sanctuary to be measured and recorded. But in one turtle’s case, he didn’t rush fast enough.

“Before I could get her back to the beach, she laid her eggs in my jeep,” he says. “Suddenly, I was a surrogate parent.” Lewis buried the eggs near the spot where he’d picked the turtle up. He watched the nest all summer. In September, during a routine nest check, a baby terrapin hatched in his hand.

It was an experience he decided he had to share. Nowadays, Lewis measures and marks the turtles where he finds them. “Every time someone goes by, I go out of my way to get them to ask me what I’m doing,” he says. “Once I’ve got them holding a terrapin in their hands, people naturally want to help.” Lewis also began handing out his card and walking the roads talking with newly arrived renters.

Now when people see a turtle, they call Lewis on his cell phone. By the time he arrives, a parade of fascinated onlookers will be following the terrapin as it chooses a nesting spot. People who had never been interested in environmental issues will put up barricades to protect a nest in their own yard and invite their friends to watch the hatchlings scamper out.

Last summer, more than 100 people became involved in Lewis’ turtle posse. Local Girl Scouts made signs: “Slow down, Turtles!” Weekenders signed up to wade into the bay with their kids to gather data on terrapins swimming to deeper water at low tides.

At a recent event honoring sanctuary volunteers, Lewis was in a class by himself with 1,000 volunteer-hours in a six-month period. “Don has opened people’s eyes to their surroundings,” says 16-year-old Chris Burns, who spent most of last summer helping Lewis with his research.

Lewis also spends many hours at his computer, analyzing data and sending out turtle news to an ever-growing list of media and e-mail correspondents.

The more people know about these turtles, he says, the easier it will be to assure their survival.

Susan Keese writes from her home in southern Vermont.

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