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Hatching season for snapping turtles, and some midland painted turtles, typically begins in late August or September, stretching to late October before the amphibians go into a sleep state for the winter.

Thousands of volunteer hours and several boxed nest protectors resting around areas of water are virtually the turtles’ only chance of survival, according to Jenny Davis, the co-founder of the organization.

“In urban environments like Toronto, close to 100 per cent of turtle nests will get dug up because we’ve created perfect places for raccoons, coyotes, skunks and foxes to thrive,” Davis said. “They would be like ‘free food!’”

Davis, who doesn’t want anybody to blame those animals because they’ve been eating turtles for thousands of years, says they need to protect the turtles, which are endangered, from the predators who have other food sources.

The group started in 2021 when Davis, who was working at the High Park Nature Centre, got a call from her friend and future co-founder, Carolynne Crawley. They had discovered a giant mama snapping turtle, whom they call the actual founder, in the park.

“We didn’t really know much about turtles. We think she’s nesting, but we truly don’t know. Then it was COVID, so there was no one in their offices,” Davis said. “We realized that in Toronto, there’s no turtle protection program, and all eight species of turtles that live in Ontario are all at risk.”

“We actually have to do something about this.”

It began with protection in Hyde Park and has spread to seven other parks, including Humber, Don Valley Brickworks, Colonel Sam Smith, Smyth, Rennie, Kingsmill and Etienne Brule.

The whole process starts, for both the turtles and their protectors, with the mothers laying the eggs in May or June in well-drained, southwest-facing soil to keep their eggs warm. The organization then plants their low-to-the-ground boxes over them, which have a three-by-one-inch cut-out on each side that, to the hatchlings, look like “giant garage doors,” according to Davis.

The responsibility then shifts to a volunteer to watch over the boxes that can have about 30 to 50 siblings stuffed inside. The nests are checked four times a day and protectors approach excitedly “with their fingers crossed,” hoping to see a safe transition, Davis said.

If you’re lucky, you would look straight down and see “the bravest of the brave” dig their way through a loonie-sized emergence hole, poking their head above the soil like a submarine’s periscope scouting uncharted land before their siblings follow behind them, according to Davis.

“When we do our volunteer training, we’re like step one, marvel, because it will be magical.”

When the hatchlings come out, they get gently scooped up by the volunteers in a container who say “aaniin boozhoo and biindigen mishiikenh,” a traditional Anishinaabe greeting welcoming them to the world, before they are placed in the nearest body of water.

Davis calls on everybody to help out, often urging people she meets to “meet your neighbours.” For her, the name and the shirt, which looks like a superhero crest sprawled across the chest, serve as a call to arms. 

“Wherever you live in Toronto, if you have water in your local park, regardless of whether protectors operate there, this is happening,” Davis said. “All you need to do is start looking down and paying attention.”

The Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre says that less than one per cent of the turtles make it to adulthood, so Davis says they need all the help they can get to protect the endangered species. 

They are hoping to expand to 10 parks by next season, but say that because they are an Indigenous-led organization, they can only grow at a rate that will let them continue to be Indigenous-led.

“We’re an Indigenous grassroots collective, so we’re not even a not-for-profit. The most beautiful thing about turtle protectors is on paper, we’re actually nothing,” Davis said. 

They run a hotline from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during nesting season, and Davis says every day she finds new people checking in on the hatchlings, making sure they’re OK and coming back again the next day and the next. 

Volunteers have put more than 4,000 hours into helping the babies get past their infancy.