Tim Seeber (“Doctor Bones” in the yellow overalls), James DeSimone (gray sweater) and Chris Jones (not pictured) ventured out into icy, muddy, waters recently after James spotted some snappers in the sludge near Xcel’s energy plant in Boulder. They rescued this GIANT snapping turtle, a baby snapper, a few more painted turtles, and nearly 150 fish in two hours. This brings the count of lives saved to over 1650!

 The fish ranged in size from a monstrous three-foot carp-type fish (we’re not sure exactly), to tiny sunfish – four or five species of fish at least. They were struggling in the filthy, icy, few inches of water so we held out our nets and they swam right in. We took them to the much cleaner, warmer lake off in the distance in this picture. 

The big snapper didn’t put up much of a fight but the baby snapper tried to take James’ hand off then sprinted away!

A little history:

Xcel Energy has a canal on their property that they drained to do some maintenance on. Unfortunately, they're doing this in the middle of winter when hibernating animals are most vulnerable.

During the draining, hundreds of fish, turtles, crawfish, and other residents of the canal were susceptible to freezing temperatures and disruption that the draining caused.

Volunteers showed up over several days to relocate threatened wildlife. Many RMAD volunteers as well as people from the following groups helped out:

• Colorado Reptile Rescue
• Bleating Hearts
• National Endowment for the Animals
• Prairie Dog Action
• Wild Places

Lots of questions remain: Why didn’t someone anticipate this problem? Why weren’t wildlife specialists consulted? Were environmental laws broken? What about the marsh to the south of the canal, which is predicted to go dry because of the dewatering of the canal? Who will help the wildlife there?

 We will need to get answers to these questions. And we will need to rescue more animals. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

More articles in the Boulder Daily Camera.