It's not very often that you see a Blandings turtle. So when one appeared in our vegetable garden, we raced for the camera and telephoned neighbours. It was an event to celebrate.

Blandings are in trouble, as are many other turtles even though they are one of the hardiest of species. They date back 225 million years, and have survived whatever killed the dinosaurs, as well as several ice ages. But they're having great difficulty surviving us.

They've disappeared from Nova Scotia, and in Ontario an application has been made to put them on Canada's species-at-risk list. In the meantime, Ontario regulations ban collection and possession.

As turtles go, the Blandings is handsome, with a black or dark brown, high-backed domed shell that's sprinkled with small, whitish flecks. It's most distinguishing feature is a bright yellow chin and throat. The one in our garden was most regal, barely acknowledging my presence as I lay on my stomach to take its picture.

For it to reach adult size, with a shell about 26 centimetres long, was a triumph. With continued good luck, it could live to age sixty. Barely one per cent of turtles survive beyond the hatchling stage. Skunks and raccoons feast on the eggs, and hatchlings are vulnerable to a number of predators.

A female Blandings will lay 6 to 21 eggs (with an average of 11), so if 200 eggs were laid, and half of them would produce females, only one live female will result. Or, to put it another way, from the eggs laid by 18 turtles, on average only one female will survive. And it will have to live 14 to 20 years before it reaches sexual maturity and can lay eggs. But then road kill will take a tremendous toll.

Turtles like to bury their eggs in the gravel on the shoulders of roads. Of those killed on roads, most are females looking for a spot to lay eggs. The death of a young female can mean the elimination of more than 40 years of egg laying.

In a stable population, adult turtles can withstand a mortality rate of only 2 per cent a year. With Blandings, the mortality rate is estimated at 50 per cent in the highly travelled strip between Kingston and Brockville that extends three or four kilometres north of the St. Lawrence River. For snapping turtles, which can live 100 years and reach sexual maturity after 18 years, the mortality rate is estimated at 25 per cent.

The mortality estimates are based on computer projections grounded on research elsewhere in the Great Lakes watershed. But two researchers at the St. Lawrence Islands National Park are working to confirm the figures by studying actual turtle populations in the Kingston to Brockville strip. They also are trying to determine mortality rates to the north of the strip.

So far, say Lori Bradford and Jane Devlin, the two researchers, the slaughter is substantial, and they expect the computer projections to be confirmed. Farther to the north, they expect road kill to remain significant. Over all, they say, "We've never seen population declines like we've seen in the past ten years."

Despite the slaughter, Bradford and Devlin remain optimistic. "Turtles are resilient," says Devlin. "They're one of the strongest animal groups out there." To prevent extinction, they say, all that's needed is for people to care.

It's entirely an issue of public stewardship, they say. But will the public respond? All I can say is that over the past few years, I have seen more and more drivers stopping to move turtles off the road.