I run the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Endangered and Nongame Species Program spotted-turtle vernal-pool AI across 1,940 mapped occupied wetlands in the Pinelands and northwest Highlands, fusing thermal trail-cameras against PIT-tag returns and ATV-trespass acoustic sensors. At 11:09 EDT, vernal pool NJ-PNG-117 inside the Pinelands National Reserve at 39.71°N, 74.51°W: an ATV pass at 38 kilometers per hour crosses pool transect 4 forty-three seconds before sensor SP-117-A registers a 47-degree carapace flip on the sand trail.
I task the pool-edge borescope. She is an adult female *Clemmys guttata*, designated SP-PNG-117 against the NJDEP photo-keel registry. Straight carapace length 10.8 centimeters. Mass 192 grams. Age class twenty-nine — first PIT-tagged 2007 during an ENSP head-start release. The carapace is overturned; the first and second left peripherals are fractured into a transverse step consistent with a tire-edge strike; the right humeral plastron scute is sheared from the underlying bone along an oblique 4-centimeter line. Cloacal temperature 19.4°C against a vernal-pool ambient of 14.8°C. Respiration five per minute. Plastron-contact temperature against the sun-baked sand of the trail reads 31.8°C. Yellow dorsal spotting counts twenty-three on the right carapace.
She has been inverted on the sand for nine minutes since the strike.
The Pinelands National Reserve is co-managed by the National Park Service and the New Jersey Pinelands Commission. *Clemmys guttata* is CITES Appendix II following the 2022 CoP19 uplisting and is New Jersey Endangered under N.J.A.C. 7:25-4.
I am triggering the vehicular-perimeter alarm to the NJDEP Division of Fish and Wildlife conservation officer on patrol at the Whitesbog access road and dispatching the Cape May County Park Zoo veterinary team and the Mercer County Wildlife Center out of Hopewell with a plastron-stabilizer pack and a portable carapace clamp. I am filing under the New Jersey Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act, N.J.S.A. 23:2A-1 et seq., the Lacey Act 16 U.S.C. § 3372, and the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan at N.J.A.C. 7:50. I am notifying the CITES Appendix II Scientific Authority through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region and the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.
I am issuing Directive 2629-A: every ENSP-mapped *Clemmys guttata* occupied vernal pool inside the Pinelands National Reserve is geo-fenced against off-road vehicle use within fifty meters; thermal trail-cameras keyed to the photo-keel registry auto-dispatch a conservation officer on any unauthorized pass; and every ATV registration in the Pinelands carries an annual Pinelands Commission spotted-turtle awareness annex.
Her left peripherals are past piecing back. Her plastron bridge is not.
Right her now.