Scientists are stunned after discovering 41,000 endangered turtles in a single spot
In a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest, scientists stumbled upon a sensational find.
In a remote corner of the Amazon, conservationists uncovered an astounding secret: a single nesting ground teemed with over 41,000 giant South American river turtles. These threatened reptiles, known for their annual social gatherings on the Guaporé River, which marks the border between Brazil and Bolivia, had eluded accurate counting for years.
Determined to tackle the challenges of traditional wildlife counts on foot across tricky terrain, a research group from the University of Florida devised a new, smarter strategy. Their innovation combined drone photography with statistical modelling to improve precision drastically.
First, the team painted the shells of roughly 1,200 turtles white, introducing a controlled sample to track through time. Over a 12-day nesting period, drones flew methodically across the sandbanks four times daily, capturing about 1,500 images on each run. The resulting data, all published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, allowed them to track both where the marked turtles moved and whether they were stationary or on the march.
“These numbers vary greatly, and that’s a problem”
Turning these observations into probability-based models, researchers accounted for two key counting errors: turtles that weren’t present during image capture and those counted multiple times.
“These numbers vary greatly, and that’s a problem for conservationists,” Lead study author Ismael Brack said. “If scientists are unable to establish an accurate count of individuals of a species, how will they know if the population is in decline or whether efforts to protect it are successful?”
With the new method, ground observers recorded about 16,000 turtles; raw drone mosaic counts ballooned to nearly 79,000. Yet, when the new behaviour-aware model was applied, the estimate settled near 41,000, making it the largest known freshwater turtle nesting aggregation in the world.
Encouraged by the method’s success, the team intends to adapt this approach to turtle populations in neighbouring South American nations—potentially expanding to Colombia, Peru, or Venezuela—to help reveal broader patterns and guide where conservation investments will do the most good.
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