Don't Paint The Turtles

0:03 Hey there, I'm Johnny Mac with five good news stories. What's going on with all these nests? In late September, a nest was discovered on a beach in Seal Beach, California. Then another nest at Huntington Beach. What is going on here? Well, apparently it's the Olive Ridley Sea Turtles, a species native to tropical Pacific waters. typically found nesting along the coasts of Mexico, Costa Rica, and similar latitudes, laid eggs on beaches in Orange County. It had never happened before, not once in recorded history, and here it happened twice. The nest contained 204 eggs total. Biologists moved the eggs to the Aquarium of the Pacific, where they could be monitored in controlled conditions while researchers figured out what is going on. Well, the scientists think the warming ocean temperatures are pushing marine species northward. Marine heat waves have been pushing sea surface temperatures in California waters to record highs. Olive ridleys following warmer currents and warmer beaches are ranging further north than they ever had. One researcher said, I wasn't expecting to see olive ridley sea turtles nesting in Orange County. The hope is that enough of the turtles will hatch to give researchers data on this new northern frontier. The good news is for now, the 204 eggs are being watched over.

1:16 Hope you guys make it. April is a veteran. She lives on 15 acres of rural land in southeast Mississippi, and she runs a sanctuary for 22 primates. These are monkeys, apes, and animals rescued from the illegal exotic pet trade. And she has built the place into somewhere where veterans come to heal. The animals at Gulf Coast Primate Sanctuary came from all kinds of terrible situations. Many spent years as illegal pets, isolated, unable to express natural behaviors, having learned not to trust animals. April, who has PTSD herself, started working with them. She noticed something. The process of earning a primate's trust, slowly, patiently, without forcing it, had a particular effect on her, so she started bringing in other veterans to the sanctuary. She called the program Unplugged. She explains, by helping the primates learn to trust, we're also reteaching ourselves how to trust. In the rainforests of Borneo, something unusual has been happening in nine communities. Villagers are getting paid to take pictures, not tourism photos, but wildlife photos.

2:14 A program run by conservation group Borneo Futures helps local people earn money by documenting the animals that live in the forest around them. Orangutans, gibbons, flat-headed cats. More than 800 participants across nine communities have submitted 378,000 wildlife observations. Participants can earn more than $ 200 a month on average, which is a lot of money in Borneo, coming entirely from photographing wildlife that always seen but never had a reason to document. Imelda is 72 and said, we really, really want to help protect them. Conservation programs have historically struggled when local communities are not partners. This flips that dynamic. The people closest to the forest are the ones documenting it, benefiting in its preservation and building a record of what's there.

2:56 Nice job, everybody. Charles spent 20 years in an Idaho prison for crimes he did not commit. For part of that time, he was on death row. The case against him fell apart in 2001 when DNA evidence proved definitively that he didn't do it. He was exonerated and released. He was 53 years old. He teamed up with Greg, a scientist who had worked on his case, and to Amanda Knox, who had her own experience in a wrongful conviction in a foreign country. Together, they founded the Innocence Center, based in San Diego, an organization focused on wrongful conviction cases and the science of evidence. Charles is now in his 70s. He works on cases involving people who are where he was. He says his three favorite letters in the alphabet are D-N-A. When Venetia moved into her new house in Kentucky, she discovered the previous owners at some point decided to decorate the backyard with turtles. Not ceramic turtles, not garden sculptures shaped like turtles. Actual eastern box turtles, painted blue, arranged around the yard as living decorations. She found one, Pickett. She took Pickett to the Wilderness Trail Wildlife Center. Staff there began the careful process of removing the paint from a turtle shell. Tanya is one of the rehabbers and said the shell is not a blank canvas.

4:03 A turtle shell is living tissue. It has scoots that grow, breathe, and serve biological functions. Coating them in thick paint is pretty harmful. The team used a combination of toothbrush, dish soap, and mineral spirits to work through the layers. After about six days, half the paint was off. Picket was otherwise healthy, eating well, active, responding normally. He just needed not to be blue anymore. And those are your five good news stories for today. Have an awesome day.