Hurricane Charley Brings Cooperation

Russ Gurley

Setup at the National Reptile Breeders Expo had gone as planned. A fast-paced day of establishing displays, putting up banners, and getting animals, books, supplies, shirts, and artwork ready for visitors to the Expo. The skies were unusually dark during setup and the rain swept in sporadically during the afternoon. By mid-afternoon, news began to spread in somewhat ominous whispers, “The hurricane is headed our way.” By Friday evening during the Turtle and Tortoise Preservation Group's Turtle Night, the winds and crashing rain had increased dramatically. Our cast of speakers from around the country and around the world was occasionally interrupted by a failure in power and intercom warnings telling us all to keep away from windows and to remain indoors. As Turtle Night ended, Hurricane Charley reached his zenith and the winds, rain, and flying debris sent most NRBE attendees to the safety of their rooms and a large banquet room nestled deep inside the hotel.

The devastation we awoke to on Saturday morning startled even me, a veteran of several giant Oklahoma tornadoes including the monster of May 3, 1999 that killed 46 people. Palm trees were uprooted and lay lifeless across the roads. Many had crashed onto the roofs of houses and onto cars. Up and down the beach signs, billboards, and store fixtures lay in ruins. Cooling units had been lifted from rooftops and been sent hurtling through store windows. Water was everywhere – inside and out – and nerves were shaken by the scene outdoors.

Relief washed over us that no injuries had occurred at the hotel or to our fellow Expo-goers. The only real damage appeared to be several dozen broken car windows in the hotel's parking lots and various water-logged boxes and rain-soaked equipment. However, word spread quickly through the turtle and tortoise crowd that several of our colleagues had received damage to their facilities. Dennis Uhrig has designed and built one of the premier aquatic turtle collections in the United States. He maintains and breeds thousands of turtles and specializes in sliders, keeping 24 of the 28 known species and subspecies. (Every species except for those found in Mexico.) His creative and expansive breeding facility has been recently featured in several books and international journals. Dennis got word from his wife back home that things were “very bad”. As it turns out, power was out, water was off, and there was serious physical damage to his enclosures, fences, and surrounding foliage. George and Maria Ullmann, tortoise breeders living near Arcadia, received extensive damage to their facilities including damaged fences, dozens of downed trees, and other damage to their property. Expo organizer Wayne Hill received extensive damage to his property including downed trees and damaged outbuildings and fences. He, too, was without electricity.

News spread rapidly among the turtle crowd. This group of two dozen keepers and breeders from across the country and Europe meet each year at the Expo to catch up on the years events and to share special time together during this weekend each year.

Help was needed but what could we do? Some of us met up at the TSA meeting in Orlando and after listening to a day of talks, we decided to head out to Dennis's and to see what could be done. Surprisingly, thirty people appeared in the parking lot, eager to help in any way they could. We mobilized the group of volunteers which included private breeders, zoo keepers, turtle enthusiasts, and some of the world's leading authorities on turtles and tortoises. We mobilized into a group eager to help Dennis in his struggles. We loaded up, drove there in a caravan of cars, and arrived to what can only be described as a mind-blowing scene. There were piles and piles of debris, tree limbs in ponds, and fences down, huge trees knocked over, shade cloth ripped and blown away. Bent poles and lumber littered the entire area. We each assessed our skills and began working across the property.

John Cann, the leading authority on Australia's freshwater turtles, grabbed one of the three chainsaws and began cutting limbs and branches from several trees that had fallen at Dennis's yard. Two of the trees were nearly two feet in diameter at their bases and once stood thirty feet in the air.

Others began pulling debris from the ponds while others began by hauling the twisted poles and masses of shade cloth from the ponds and enclosures and trying to make sense of the mess.

Like Army Ants, we hauled branches, twisted metal, and piles of leaves and debris as the hours passed. The last large tree was cut into pieces and hauled away by flashlight, night having overtaken us nearly an hour before.

Tired, wet, and sore, we headed back to Orlando, a gracious Dennis Uhrig thanking us as we loaded up to go. Soft-spoken and shy, Dennis beamed with pride at the friends and colleagues who helped get him back on track in a single evening of hard work.

Upon reflection in producing this article, I couldn't help but think about the parallels in what so many of the private sector would like to see happen in the turtle world. To see academics, private keepers, zoo employees, and turtle hobbyists pitch in to help a colleague in dire need was inspiring. Unfortunately, very little of this spirit of cooperation exists in the turtle hobby right now. Zoos continue with their closed system, “unable” to share their offspring or surplus animals with private keepers. Many academicians and researchers keep to themselves or squabble over taxonomy and dna topics. Some are still putting forth the ridiculous ideas that captive breeding and captive programs will not help conserve turtles. One well-known hypocrite calls private turtle breeders “pet keepers” and carries on an insidious behind-the-scenes push to stop the keeping of turtles by private keepers and wants to have every species of turtle protected by Appendix I of CITES. There is no doubt that both zoo and private programs for threatened species would benefit from an exchange of genetic diversity that would occur from sharing animals.

This evening at Dennis's, full of hard work, sweat, and lots of laughs and camaraderie, was a poignant reminder that we are all similar and most of us are working toward a singular goal – to help save the world's turtles, dramatically threatened across our planet.

Our thoughts go out to the others affected by Hurricane Charley, especially those that lost loved ones, animals, and property in its wake.

All Photos by A. J. Offermann