Turtle Lady ends career of caring for turtles and tortoises (via Herp Digest)

Via Herp Digest:

Turtle Lady ends career of caring for turtles and tortoises
by Paige Cornwell/Lincoln Journal Star, 6/24/11


(Editor- I post this article because she was only 58 (I'm 57) so it makes me think how many of you out there any age have plans for what happens to your herps if something dreadful happens to you?)

For more than two decades, Angie Byorth has been the "Turtle Lady."
She's rehabilitated thousands of turtles, lobbied for turtle conservation, even changed her middle name to Turtle Lady.

But friends and colleagues say her days of saving turtles have come to an end. Byorth had a stroke May 7 and has been at Madonna Rehabilitation Center since.

Before that, she was caring for more than 100 turtles in her home.

Byorth, 58, declined to be interviewed, but friends said she should be released from the hospital Friday.
In a 2008 Journal Star letter to the editor, Byorth said she had lived closely with turtles and tortoises, as well as the occasional frog, salamander and snake, since she was 8 and growing up in her native Germany. She came to Lincoln in 1970 as an exchange student, then returned in 1972. She has two grown children.

She began rehabilitating turtles in 1973, and people began to drop off turtles they found or called her when they were concerned about one.

"Animal welfare has been and still is her first concern," said Joel Sartore, a National Geographic photographer and friend of Byorth, who also ran unsuccessfully for Legislature.
When Janice Spicha's two then-young sons found a turtle that had been smashed and was barely alive, people told her they had to go to the turtle lady, Spicha said.

"I thought she would suggest taking the turtle to a vet, but she personally reconstructed the shell," Spicha said. "She's one of a kind -- one of the good kind. You don't find many people who would dedicate their life to something so uncuddly as a turtle."

Mark Brohman, executive director of the Nebraska Environmental Trust, met Byorth in 1991 when he was a legislative aide and she came to Sen. Rod Johnson's office to learn how to change the laws regarding the commercial buying and selling of turtles.

"She was one of those big-hearted people," Brohman said. "And she loved turtles."

In 1993, the Legislature passed a law allowing the Game and Parks Commission to regulate the commercial exploitation of the state's 62 species of reptiles and amphibians. The commission also began collecting data on the effects that buying and selling had on wildlife.

Eleven years later, then-Gov. Mike Johanns signed regulations that prohibited the capture and sale of native Nebraska reptiles and amphibians.

"If anyone doubts that a small group can make a difference," they should take a lesson from Byorth, Johanns said in 2002.

Byorth's African desert tortoise Big Boy, then 6 years old and 30 pounds, took a stroll around the floor of the Legislature with turtle chocolates and a Turtle Conservation Project pen taped to his back.
Now weighing more than 100 pounds, Big Boy is living on a farm near Gretna with two other African desert tortoises. Brohman and Byorth's son placed him there after Byorth's stroke.

Her son and her friends have found homes for most of the turtles, save three she wants to keep. Among those placed were two bog turtles and three Russian turtles. Brohman's daughter took in two of Byorth's salamanders.

Brohman said he thought Byorth would end much of the conservation work for the animals she spent as many as six hours a day caring for.

"What I hope for her is that she gets well," Sartore said. "Then, we'll see. She's a young person."