Why did the turtle cross the road? Because you helped wheelbarrow it there.

The ambling animals aren’t known for looking both ways; cars are one of the biggest killers of Ontario’s turtles, which are often spotted along the province’s roadways.

With seven of Ontario’s eight turtle species at risk, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is trying to teach people how to help the slow-moving critters if they see one on the road.

Remember wheelbarrow races? The childhood game is an effective way to get feisty snapping turtles across the street.

As their name suggests, snapping turtles tend to reach their necks around and snap their jaw as a defence mechanism.

Avoid a biting mouth by grabbing the two “handles” at the back of a snapping turtle’s shell, tipping it up onto its front legs, and “wheelbarrowing” it across the road, said Kristyn Ferguson, a program director with Nature Conservancy Canada.

“You’re essentially helping it walk to safety,” she said, demonstrating with Junior, a large snapping turtle at Scales Nature Park.

Ferguson is trying to encourage people to pull over and help turtles across the street, and Nature Conservancy Canada is producing an educational video and blog posts on the topic.

“Even just saving that one turtle can make a huge impact on the population in general,” she said.

Painted turtles are another common species you’ll see on Ontario roads. These smaller turtles usually hide their heads in their shells, so the trick is simply to pick it up “like a hamburger” and carry it across, said Ferguson, noting that they have yellow stripes on their face and orange-red patterns on their shell. You should place the turtle down gently and move away, she said.

And don’t try to turn turtles around!

“Even if it makes no sense to us, they’re going where they’re going for a reason,” said Sue Carstairs, executive and medical director of the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre.

Drivers should look out for things that resemble rocks and potholes, she said, especially around water and wetlands.

The peak time for turtle crossings is June, when females are finding places to lay their eggs, said Carstairs, but males are out all season.

Ferguson said human safety has to be paramount when people are helping turtles. Last year, a woman was hit by a car and seriously injured after stopping to help a turtle near Peterborough.

“We aren’t encouraging people to get out along busy 400 series highways or put their own lives at risk,” said Ferguson. “Assess the situation: how busy is the road? Do you have a safe route to get the turtle across?”

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Helping a turtle across the road can have huge benefits to the turtle population, as the animals take a long time to reach maturity and are slow to reproduce.

“If even a few get hit by cars, it could double or triple the death rate, or more,” said Jeff Hathaway, founder of Scales Nature Park, which has a focuses on turtle conservation.

“Extend that over 40 or 50 years . . . and the population declines tremendously.”

It’s been a particularly active summer for Ontario’s turtles, who have been out “en masse” this year, said Carstairs.

This summer’s weather has been ideal for turtle travels, she said, and there’s been a “huge spike” in injured critters at the conservation centre hospital

It’s already taken in roughly 800 turtles so far this year, double the numbers from 2016.

“We’ve seen more already this year than we’ve ever seen in an entire year altogether,” said Carstairs.

While she’s glad more people are taking turtles to the centre, Carstairs said that also means more turtles are likely dying in car accidents.

She said the most effective way to save turtles is installing passages under the roads so the animals can safely cross.

Painted turtles are currently the only turtle species in Ontario that are not listed as “at risk” in Ontario, however survey studies are now being conducted on the species, said Carstairs. She said habitat loss is likely the top cause of turtle decline.

“Their way of living has worked for almost 200 million years just fine . . . but as soon as we came along, we sort of tipped that balance,” she said.

“If everybody in the province helped one turtle across the road, that’s saving a lot of turtles.”