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Wildlife Protection

Keeping It Simple: Easy Ways to Help Wildlife Along Roads

Donated signposts help protect migrating turtles

"Beachfront lights out May through October. Let's save the sea turtles."

The South Carolina Department of Transportation donated the steel posts for these U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signs posted all along South Carolina's southern coastline. The colorful 24-inch by 18-inch signs urge visitors and vacationers to dim the lights on the porches and interiors of their beachfront rental homes so the lights won't disrupt the migration behavior of endangered loggerhead sea turtles. Since newly hatched loggerheads depend on the moon to find their way to the ocean, lights on the beach can disrupt their innate orientation, causing them to move inland where they may be attacked by predators or get caught in weeds or behind dunes. Thanks to the signs, fewer hatchlings are mistakenly migrating inland instead of back into the water.
 
--Apr 25, 2003

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo

Sea turtle sign