Fifteen northwestern pond turtle hatchlings, each about the size of a cherry tomato, arrived at the Oregon Zoo this summer, where they will spend the winter growing faster than nature would allow.
The zoo announced the arrivals on August 6, 2026. Conservationists are head-starting the endangered reptiles, keeping them until next spring when they are big enough to survive on their own. Guests can watch them grow at the conservation lab inside the Nature Exploration Station, near the tiger and red panda habitats.
The bullfrog problem
“These hatchlings are very vulnerable to predators,” said Jen Osburn Eliot, who runs the zoo’s turtle recovery program. “At this small size, a bullfrog can gobble them up right out of the nest like a bunch of popcorn.”
The American bullfrog is native to the eastern United States and invasive in the Northwest. It is the largest frog on the continent, can weigh more than a pound, and has pushed pond turtles and other small aquatic species toward extinction.
A year without winter
Eliot and her colleagues collected the hatchlings earlier this summer from sites in the Columbia Gorge, working with Washington Fish and Wildlife biologists, and brought them to the zoo’s lab.
There the turtles get heat lamps and steady food, which keeps them out of hibernation and in permanent summer. Once they reach about 50 grams, a little over two ounces, they go back to their ponds and are monitored.
“We make sure they have everything they need to grow,” Eliot said. “When they return to the wild, they’re as large as a 3-year-old turtle.”
From fewer than 100 to more than 1,500 released
The northwestern pond turtle, also called the western pond turtle, is listed as endangered in Washington and sensitive in Oregon. Two decades ago fewer than 100 remained in Washington and the species was close to disappearing there. More than 1,500 zoo-head-started turtles have been released since.
“Each hatchling is critical,” Eliot said. “We need to increase the number of turtles in the wild if we’re going to save this species from extinction.”
The Western Pond Turtle Recovery Project runs as a collaboration between the Oregon Zoo, Woodland Park Zoo, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bonneville Power Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and other partners.
