Across Ontario, a quiet yet urgent logistical marvel unfolds on highways, back roads, and remote airstrips week after week. Thousands of passionate volunteers are collaborating to operate a vital emergency transportation network with a single, high-stakes objective: saving turtles.
Their ultimate destination is the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre (OTCC) located in Peterborough. As the province’s only wild turtle hospital accredited by the College of Veterinarians of Ontario, the facility serves as a critical frontline defense for freshwater turtles. Inside its doors, dedicated veterinary teams provide emergency medical care, surgeries, and rehabilitation for turtles suffering from a range of life-threatening situations, including vehicle strikes, stranding, and traumatic encounters with other wildlife.
The stakes of this mission extend beyond individual adult animals. Whenever possible, veterinary and volunteer teams salvage eggs from deceased female turtles brought into the centre. These eggs can often be artificially incubated, hatched, and eventually released back into their native habitats, ensuring that a lineage is not entirely lost. The OTCC has affectionately—and aptly—dubbed this extensive, multi-tiered volunteer rescue effort the "Turtle Taxi."
Because Ontario’s native turtle species are geographically dispersed across a massive province, transporting an injured animal to the specialized care facility in Peterborough frequently requires a complex, multi-thousand-kilometre journey by land or air. Overcoming this immense geographic barrier is a coordinated network of more than 1,500 volunteers who step in to bridge the gap between rural discovery and urban veterinary intervention.
Among these volunteers is Wayne Harvey, a pilot and dedicated Turtle Taxi participant who has completed numerous flights to retrieve injured turtles from far-flung corners of the province. Flying his aircraft from his home base near London, Ont., to remote regions like Dryden, Ont., Harvey provides a critical, high-speed lifeline for injured animals that would otherwise face grueling land transit spanning more than 1,500 kilometres.
Harvey routinely monitors communications from the OTCC requesting assistance with long-distance reptile transports. When a call for help is issued, he plots a cross-province flight plan, executing up to four such rescue missions a year.
"If I see a few places that I know have small airports, I’ll offer to pick them up at, say, three or four airports," Harvey explains.
At each designated stop along his flight path, local volunteers meet him on the tarmac with turtles safely secured in individual carriers. These ground crews frequently include local turtle First Responders—many of whom are professional veterinarians and veterinary technicians—equipped to stabilize the delicate trauma patients before they are loaded onto the aircraft for their journey east.
Pilot Isaiah Frazao is another aviator who donates his time and aircraft to the cause, completing his first full season of transporting injured turtles across the province this past summer. For Frazao, participating in the Turtle Taxi network has offered a profound sense of purpose, personal fulfillment, and an intimate connection with Canada’s native wildlife.
"Turtles are very quiet animals," Frazao observes, reflecting on his unusual passengers. "But, once we bring them to Peterborough, and they see all the OTCC representatives, they come right out of their shells."
This sophisticated web of public support arrives at a precarious ecological juncture for Ontario’s reptiles. All eight of the province’s native freshwater turtle species are currently designated as at risk by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), an independent panel of scientists and wildlife experts responsible for assessing species at the national level.
Reptile populations face a compounding barrage of environmental pressures. Vehicle strikes on increasingly busy roadways, systemic habitat loss due to agricultural and urban development, and high rates of nest predation by raccoons and other mammals threaten to decimate local populations. These acute threats are further aggravated by the biological reality of turtles themselves: they possess exceptionally long maturation periods and low annual reproduction rates, meaning populations cannot easily bounce back from sudden adult mortality.
For Turtle Taxi volunteer Kelly Holman, based in Arkona, Ont., an initial fascination with observing wild turtles during peaceful walks snowballed into active participation in the rescue network.
"I would go for walks through these conservation areas and see a whole bunch of painted turtles basking, and it was the best part of my day," Holman recalls.
Today, Holman coordinates closely with other regional Turtle Taxi volunteers to hand off turtles along relay-style transit routes leading to the OTCC. These handoffs frequently take place in public, accessible spots, such as suburban parking lots or conservation area trailheads.
Volunteers do not merely ferry injured animals to the hospital; they also play an indispensable role in completing the circle of care by returning rehabilitated turtles back into the wild. Returning a turtle to its home ecosystem requires precision, as animals must be released into the exact watersheds where they were originally found to ensure their survival.
"We use coordinates given to us by the Centre, but then you also have to rely on your phone having service and the conditions," Holman notes. In years or seasons when local wetlands have dried up due to drought, she must exercise ingenuity to pinpoint a suitable, legally compliant release site while strictly adhering to OTCC and provincial governmental regulations.
For Dean and Sharon Davidson, Turtle Taxi volunteers operating near Owen Sound, Ont., successfully releasing healed turtles back into their natural habitats stands out as one of the most rewarding aspects of their conservation work.
"Some like running water, some like quiet water, some like it weedy, some like it muddy," Dean Davidson explains, highlighting the distinct ecological preferences of different species.
Collaborating with the OTCC to identify ideal release locations often opens doors to community engagement, including conversations with private landowners. Property owners frequently agree to permit the release of rehabilitated turtles into waterways traversing their private lands, cultivating a broader, grassroots sense of community stewardship in local turtle conservation.
The OTCC operates as an integral component of the broader Ontario Turtle Conservation Network (OTCN), an umbrella coalition dedicated to expanding the reach of public education, scientific research, and active conservation initiatives across the province.
Leora Berman, founder of the Haliburton-based organization Turtle Guardians—itself an active member of the OTCN—works to weave educational programs and specialized training into communities, targeting young people and municipal workers whose daily routines bring them close to Ontario’s roadways. The Turtle Guardians’ Road Researchers Program actively advocates for the installation of safer turtle crossings and the protection of vulnerable nesting areas, particularly during peak spring and summer migration and nesting seasons.
"Turtles cross between wetlands primarily, but other turtle crossings are very random… so you’ve got hundreds and thousands of kilometres of [potential] turtle crossings," Berman explains.
To mitigate these risks, Berman advocates for structural solutions such as wildlife fencing and specialized culverts beneath roads. These measures can effectively guide turtles away from high-speed pavement, preventing vehicle strikes before they occur.
Reflecting on the deeper motivations that drive individuals to devote their time, resources, and emotional energy to the cause, Berman and the Turtle Taxi volunteers view turtle conservation as an inherently reciprocal way of living. It offers everyday citizens a tangible method to embed themselves meaningfully within their local environments.
"It connects you to the Earth, and creation, and also the next generations," Berman says. "Turtles get under your skin in ways that are unexpected. There is something incredibly healing or awakening about the sentience of animals when you can hang with one that doesn’t move very fast."