A big, beautiful mama turtle died on the shoulder of a road this past June, and the eggs she was carrying turned into a story with a happy-ish ending. Southern Ontario At Risk Reptiles (SOARR), a program of the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) for at-risk turtles and snakes, pulled 47 eggs from the endangered spiny softshell.
Thirteen of them hatched after 60 days in SOARR's incubators, and the little ones have since been released.
Many eggs were in poor condition because of the vehicle impact.
The hero of the piece is Stephen Kilbridge, who was driving a road he takes all the time when he spotted her on the shoulder. And she was a unit: SOARR calls her "one of the largest specimens ever found in Ontario," with a shell over 18 inches (46 cm) long.
She'd been killed "while seeking out a nest site," the team wrote. That's not standard softshell behaviour, since these turtles rarely stray far from the water, but nesting opportunities are very limited, so she tried the road shoulder instead.
She turned up in an area with "only a couple of previous records" of the species, "making it a significant find," SOARR wrote.
Stephen, who has a background with nature organizations, knew he was looking at a rare sighting. He loaded the turtle into his car and got her somewhere cool, hoping that removing the eggs might save some of them.
The SOARR crew met him later that day to collect the turtle and take out the eggs. The spot was outside SOARR's permitted region, so the team also worked with Salthaven to make the egg retrieval happen.
For scale: a female spiny softshell in Ontario typically lays a single clutch of fewer than 30 eggs a year, and one study in a protected area of the province suggests clutches can reach 43. Forty-seven is a whole lot of turtle.
Losing her stings, too. Female softshells don't reach maturity until they're at least 12 to 15 years old, some live past 50, and nests and hatchlings have extremely low survival rates, so even a slight rise in adult deaths can drag a population into long-term decline.
"These 13 young survived because of Stephen's actions. Thank you so much Stephen!" SOARR wrote. "We released the young Turtles together, and we hope they do well, producing more young of their own in the future."
The babies arrive in a bumper year. SOARR incubated 984 nests in 2026, among them 458 spiny softshell nests collected from the Thames, expected to send up to 7,000 softshell hatchlings into the wild.
The program, in its 33rd year in 2026, has contributed to an increase in Canada's spiny softshell population.
"These results demonstrate what is possible when communities come together to protect species at risk," said Scott Gillingwater, Species at Risk Biologist with the UTRCA.
SOARR does all that without provincial funding for its species at risk work, so much of the program relies on municipalities, organizations, foundations, businesses and individual donors, with the City of London among its supporters.
If you spot a turtle or a nest in southwestern Ontario, the UTRCA's online Turtle Reporting Form sends your sighting straight to the SOARR team, who rescue the eggs, then incubate them and set the young free. For an injured turtle, call the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre right away at 705-741-5000. And brake for turtles crossing the road when it's safe to do so.
Thirteen little pancakes with snorkel noses, out in the world. Thanks, Stephen.