USGS Scientist Wins Prestigious Global Turtle Conservation Award
After over 40 years conducting research across the globe and in the deserts of the Southwest, noted turtle and tortoise ecologist Dr. Jeff Lovich has been awarded the highest honor in his field: the prestigious international Behler Turtle Conservation Award. This honor is considered the “Nobel Prize” of turtle conservation.
The Behler Turtle Conservation Award is a major annual international award that honors excellence in the field of tortoise and freshwater turtle conservation and biology, & leadership in the chelonian conservation and biology community.
Dr. Jeff Lovich has been publishing on the ecology and taxonomy of turtles and other wildlife for 40 years.
He has produced over 200 scientific publications and five books. Along the way, he described and named 4 turtle taxa, including 3 in the U.S. and one in Japan. Most of his research is in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts. He is a Fulbright Scholar and an elected Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, the world’s oldest active biological society. Dr. Lovich has been one of the editors of the international scientific journal Chelonian Conservation and Biology for over 10 years. His research focuses on all aspects of turtle ecology, and the impacts of utility-scale wind and solar energy development on wildlife, especially desert tortoises.
Dr. Lovich was born to study these amazing and beloved creatures.
In fact, as a little boy, his parents gifted him a Reptiles and Amphibians guide which he has to this day. Decades later, he went on to write his own defining opus, an illustrated hardcover guide called "Turtles of the World, a Guide to Every Family."
In recognition of their significance, Dr. Lovich went from collecting box turtles as a boy to formal studies as an adult, and along the way had some incredible adventures. He is so devoted to his work that he donned special gear to wade through treated wastewater wetlands to find out how the only two populations of western pond turtles in the Mojave Desert fared. Other adventures, or misadventures, include surviving a hurricane overnight on a barrier island to complete population assessments of diamond-backed terrapins with his collaborators. Research of this turtle population (that he jokingly dubbed “hurricane turtles”) on Kiawah Island off the coast of South Carolina is the longest continuously running study of those turtles in the world.
You might ask, what makes these reptiles so iconic?
Well, besides their ancient heritage — their ancestors shared the world with dinosaurs — they have a unique body armor that has protected them over 220 million years. There is no other animal with a backbone, living or extinct, that has their shoulders and hips inside a rib cage that forms a shell. (Any animal with a backbone and a bony shell is considered a turtle, including tortoises and terrapins.) Despite their long existence, over half of the world’s approximately 360 species of turtles are facing extinction from human activities. Dr. Lovich has spent his lifetime providing critical research that can be used to better protect them.
Dr. Lovich's travels have taken him to the Galápagos, Japan, Morocco, and throughout the USA. On a Fulbright Scholarship to Morocco, he checked off a bucket list item when he found and studied striped-necked terrapins in the Sahara Desert that have beautiful sky-blue-eyes and survive in oases among the vast sand dunes.
In the U.S., Dr. Lovich has spent over 30 years researching Agassiz’s desert tortoises, long-lived denizens of the Desert Southwest. Much of what we know about desert tortoise behaviors, habitats, reproduction, and strategies for survival — including responding to wind and solar energy development and its effects on the landscape — is due to Dr. Lovich's long-term studies.
As Dr. Lovich approaches the end of his career, watching individual tortoises that he first "met" and studied decades ago at his Palm Springs, California study site is a moving experience.
Learn more about Dr. Lovich's work here.
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