Distinctly Montana Magazine

84 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 6 There is a principle in wildlife research funding: a certain few popular animals get all the funding. We call these—bears, wolves, moose—charismatic megafauna. They are charismatic in the sense that people love them. They are all the more lovable if they are endangered. This necessarily means that the turtle's story is not that of the Af- rican lion or the grizzly bear or, controversially in Montana, the wolf, where the animal's value is derived both from picturesque- ness and in rarity. Consider the Javan rhino, of which only some 75 still exist, and which ranks highly for both picturesqueness and rarity. The value of such a "beastie," to borrow a word from Burns, is very easy to reckon. Dr. Erim Gomez is an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Biology at the University of Montana, and he runs the Charismatic Mini- fauna Lab. He holds a PhD and is in the W. A. Franke College of Forestry. He defines "charismatic minifauna," a term he didn't originate but has helped to popularize, as "smaller wildlife species. Some you could easily hold in a hand or two. These animals are from taxa (taxonomic groups) that are often overlooked by the public and receive less attention in conservation and research funding. They include a wide range of species, from crayfish and butter- flies to turtles, salamanders, and songbirds. While many charis- matic minifauna are nongame species, the term is not limited to nongame wildlife." He says he "was inspired to use the term because of my child- hood love of small wildlife. Have you ever seen a child hold a frog, salamander, or turtle for the first time? To that child, those animals are definitely charismatic. When I ask people about the first non-insect wildlife they ever held, many name one of those animals." Sometimes it can be challenging to study a creature that dies in such droves in spring. The Western Painted Turtle can live for a remarkably long time. "When an animal has survived for 25, 30, or even 50 years, losing it feels a bit heavier. Still, I try not to dwell on it." The question of the value of a painted turtle, neither rare nor lion- ized, must be reckoned a different calculus, perhaps closer to that of Richard Adams's Watership Down, a classic novel about a differ- ent kind of charismatic minifauna. The book's rabbits, though an- thropomorphized, face roads, predators, and even other rabbits. When one is killed, the reader or viewer is saddened and horrified (as many people who encountered the story in their childhood will attest to). Considerable suspense is generated from whether characters like "Hazel" and "Fiver" will survive. Turtles display some degree of individuality, Gomez told us via email. Some will hiss at humans while they try to hold them, oth- ers won't. Some even seem to learn. "Repeated trapping and release can make some turtles trap-shy. Some animals remember traps and learn to avoid them, so we move the traps around and space trapping sessions one to two weeks apart. Some scientists even use different types of traps over the season to confuse the turtles." In 2023, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes received nearly $75 million from the federal government to construct ex- tensive wildlife crossings all along Highway 93. In July of 2025, much of that funding was rescinded, leading to dramatic cut- backs in their sweeping plan. Only reduced funding remains, and one large wildlife crossing is still slated for 2027. The sweep- ing series of crossings have been reduced to one overpass wild- life crossing and a wildlife movement bridge over Post Creek, until additional funding is secured. Cut are the proposed daylit underpasses that the tribes' biologists had planned as ideal for darkness-shy painted turtles. Some turtles may, at least, try to pass, unbidden, over the one remaining grizzly bridge over US Highway 93. The trip will take moments for a grizzly bear, and much longer for a turtle, who will now have to climb what must seem to them to be a mountain before they get to their pond, but those turtles who can make the trip will not, at least, have to deal with cars. For the rest, at least there's still the road. Someday, the CSKT hope to install low fencing that would direct the turtle toward the crossing without obstructing additional wildlife. It is perhaps the best solution we can hope for at this time. V. If our value is worth more than $150 of boutique chemicals and elements, then perhaps it can be reckoned that our souls are worth more than our bodies. "The more I learn about a species, the more connected I feel to it, and the more I feel obligated to have a reciprocal relation- ship with it by working to conserve it," Dr. Erim Gomez writes in an email. "I don't dwell on accidental deaths, but I have heard stories of people deliberately trying to run turtles over. If those stories are true, that is maddening." Thomism, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, still the offi- cial philosophy of the Catholic Church, holds that it is not a sin, exactly, to deliberately torture or kill an animal, and not just for meat; it cannot be a sin, as they don't have immortal souls. Nev- ertheless, those who "practise a pitiful affection for animals are all the more disposed to take pity on their fellow men." In any case, this is not a conservation story. The Western Painted Turtle will live on. It is no more at immediate risk, and, if we are to be honest, probably at considerably less risk of becoming an endangered species than we are. The clash between the turtles and the cars, while seemingly implacable and without resolu-

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