Before Hurricane Helene struck the southeastern U.S. in September 2024, Fort de Soto Park, a county park located southwest of St. Petersburg, Florida, was home to just eight gopher tortoises. The species is listed as “threatened” in Florida, largely due to habitat destruction caused by widespread residential development.
The Category 4 hurricane, though catastrophic in nearly every way, appears to have had an unexpected outcome for Florida’s gopher tortoises. Fort de Soto is now home to over 84 gopher tortoise burrows, and the reptiles appear to be thriving there, as they are creating homes and mating. Park rangers are keeping track of them using motion-activated cameras.
The mystery of their sudden appearance was fairly easy to solve. The influx of gopher tortoises came from Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge, located around two miles away, at the mouth of Tampa Bay. For the past three decades, biologists from Eckerd College have tracked Egmont Key’s gopher tortoise population, drilling tiny holes in their shells for identification purposes.
Though gopher tortoises are terrestrial animals (and not particularly good swimmers), dozens managed to survive the journey in a classic example of natural dispersal. They were most likely swept away from their burrows by Hurricane Helene’s powerful storm surge and were carried away with the sand and debris. Some may have been able to cling to vegetation, while others likely just floated. Unfortunately, park rangers also found around 40 dead gopher tortoises, underlining the dangerous nature of the journey across the open water.
Burrowing to safety:
- The newly arrived tortoises initially appeared disoriented. However, before long, they were digging new burrows around Fort de Soto. Interestingly, park rangers noticed that these burrows were being built at relatively high elevations, perhaps indicating that the tortoises were taking precautions against another storm surge. One was even found at the top of Fort de Soto Park’s namesake military fort, at around 30 feet above sea level.
- Gopher tortoise burrows typically provide excellent protection from extreme temperatures, fire, drought, and predators. They can reach a depth of over six feet and are usually around 15 feet long, though some are much longer.
- Incredibly, hundreds of other species have been known to find refuge in gopher tortoise burrows, ranging from diamondback snakes to gopher frogs to burrowing owls. This makes gopher tortoises a keystone species, due to the importance of their burrows for the wider ecosystem.
