Abandoning pets to the wild is so irresponsible.
https://www.brooklynpaper.com/prospe...klyn-lake-sea/
Regular visitors to Prospect Park are well familiar with the population of turtles that roam the lake of Brooklyn’s Backyard — but few are familiar with the somber story of how the shell creatures came to be so populous in the park.
The bulk of the park’s turtle population consists of red-eared sliders — a little critter about the size of a dinner plate, and so-named for the shock of red along the side of their heads amidst an otherwise greenish body. Scores of them live in Prospect Park, and they typically spend their days sunning on partially submerged rocks, swimming in the lake, and, for the most part, going about their business underneath the murky water. But the dispriting truth is that those turtles are either abandoned pets, or the descendants of abandoned pets.
Red-eared sliders are not native to the New York metropolitan area, nor to the northeastern United States. Rather, their natural habitat is mainly in the south, especially the Mississippi River Delta. By Mother Nature’s natural edict, those critters should not be in Prospect Park.
“The turtles don’t know how to find their own food, they don’t go into hibernation at the right time,” Cramer said. “Many of them don’t make it through the winter.” The ones that do survive wreak havoc on the park’s delicate ecosystem.
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