Back in 2021, the Maine Department of Transportation partnered with the Maine Turnpike Authority to install a new culvert, or a wildlife underpass, under Route 236 in Eliot, Maine.
It was all in service of one special creature: The Blanding’s turtle.
Blanding’s turtle is a species of semi-aquatic turtle native to the central and eastern parts of Canada and the United States. While it does not have a federal Endangered Species Act designation, it is considered to be endangered throughout much of its range and has a state-level designation in Maine.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also supports conservation efforts of the turtle at a high school in Massachusetts, where students raise Blanding’s turtle hatchlings in captivity until they are ready to be released into national wildlife refuge lands.
Many of the threats facing these turtles include habitat loss, the illegal pet trade, low reproductive rates, and traffic deaths.
So, Maine officials decided to help mitigate at least one of those threats by making it easier for the area’s turtles to cross the road.
The tunnel, which is the first of its kind in Maine, is an 8-foot-wide, 6-foot-tall culvert that connects wetlands on each side of a busy state highway, including a 100-acre parcel of land protected by the Great Works Regional Land Trust.
The size of the tunnel makes it inclusive to wildlife beyond just the small turtle species, with roadside fencing designed to usher critters towards the tunnel rather than the road.
Back in 2021, it cost about $400,000 to install, with the Maine Turnpike Authority contributing much of the funding to mitigate wetland disturbances from the construction of a high-speed toll plaza on a nearby turnpike, according to The Maine Monitor.
In the years since, biologists at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said the tunnel has proven to be a success.
“There’s been a substantial reduction in turtle mortalities,” Greg LeClair, a municipal planning biologist at the state agency, said at the presentation. “Follow-up surveys have shown much fewer turtles being crushed on that section of road.”
In the summer of 2025, the Maine DOT added a special trail camera with light beams that can detect the presence of small, slow-moving wildlife, providing proof of the Blanding’s turtles using the accommodation and keeping safe from what another state biologist called “a highway of death.”
Over a five-month period, the camera also captured over 270 photos of other wildlife in the tunnel, including snapping turtles, salamanders, muskrats, and mink.
Not a single Blanding’s turtle has been found dead on the road since the crossing was installed, according to the department, though a small number of snapping turtles and painted turtles have been killed.
“The closeness of the roads and the houses and the wetlands down in southern Maine means that throughout the course of its life, a turtle is going to come into contact with human infrastructure quite a bit,” Kevin Ryan, a reptile and amphibian biologist at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said in a presentation.
But that doesn’t mean humans can’t live in harmony with the local wildlife.
While the new culvert has been a life-saving intervention for these reptiles, LeClair also said that locals can do their part to protect endangered turtles, like making their backyards “turtle-friendly.”
His tips included growing native plants and allowing leaves, logs, and other debris to “stick around” for turtles to use to create safe habitats.
People can even go the extra mile and provide a nesting area for turtles with abandoned compost heaps or sand piles. However, LeClair warned, people should contact a local rehabilitation center when they see eggs and should not remove them on their own.
He also recommended that locals keep activities away from wetlands to create a “turtle buffer” so the species can move around their natural habitat as much as possible.
“It’s basically a playground for these turtles,” LeClair said in the presentation, about area wetlands.
Ultimately, like the “turtle tunnels” that bridge different parts of Maine for its beloved native species, Maine conservationists hope locals can find a way to bridge the gaps between conservation and development.
“Communities are dealing with what seems like, on the surface, competing interests. There is a huge demand for housing. And yet there is also a huge desire to preserve open space,” Pete Egelston, chair of the Eliot Conservation Commission, told The Maine Monitor.
“It’s one of the things that I think has caused a lot of communities to put a different shape to their approach to housing and zoning and so on, because … what we really want to do is have the best of both worlds.”
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Header image courtesy of the Maine Department of Transportation
