Leatherback Sea Turtle
The Leatherback Sea Turtle is an endangered species in the Northeast Ecological Corridor and faces many challenges if it will be pulled of that endangered list. Leatherback Sea Turtles can grow up to seven feet in length which is incredible but is very rare because many do not reach this age. The sad fact is that this sea turtle's lifespan is unknown because many of them suffer an untimely end due to pollution and loss of habitat. In fact, about one in a thousand sea turtle hatchlings make it adult hood. This means that the sea turtle population is decreasing drastically if they can be old enough to even reproduce. What's even worse is that some people use the eggs of the sea turtle for food in restaurants. This reduces their chance of survival even further. And it doesn't end there. Sea turtles not only die from pollution, loss of habitat, human diet, and other unnatural causes, but they also die from cars or starvation. They die from cars because of the light the cities give off. Baby sea turtles look for the moon and that will lead them towards salvation and the ocean, but the light from the cities are brighter than the moon and so the baby sea turtles follow that and end up on the highways and streets in the city being killed or run over by vehicles or just plain starvation from a lack of food. All of these factors are limiting sea turtle reproduction and that makes them on the endangered list. By, having the sea turtle endangered, it throws the whole food chain out of balance which has an effect on the ecosystem making it either stumble and making it hard to recover or tearing it apart completely.
Turtlefat
The Turtlefat is an extremely rare species of plant. There is not much information about this plant because it is so endangered. This plant is so endangered that in fact, there are only 19 known specimens on record. This is all fine and dandy if we knew how they reproduced and if they could reproduce. The problem is that none of the known specimens can yet reproduce and there is only one that looks of age. They look like a small tree, almost like a shrub and can be from ankle height to maybe even 5 meters in height. There may have been even more specimens but because of human impact, a highway was built where a few specimens were believed to be growing and therefore were destroyed during construction. This species is so secluded in the Northeast Ecological Corridor that they are very hard to find. So, if any development took place in this ecosystem, then this species would be completely extinct in this region. Because of the species already being so rare, currently they don't play a big role in the ecosystem because a long time ago they must have been populous and because of extreme climate change, or any other factor was decimated to only a few and the ecosystem is still not able to recover because of the negative human impact. The Turtlefat is very rare and needs your help, learn more and become involved.