It’s a typical story. You buy a red-eared slider terrapin, build a pond and erect what you think is a terrapin proof fence. A few months down the line you find the terrapin has completely vanished. You worry that your pet might be dead.

Don’t worry that your pet might be dead, worry that he might be alive and waging havoc on Bermuda’s native wildlife.

Red-eared sliders, semi-aquatic terrapins, are some of the most common pets in the world and have been sold in Bermuda since the 1950s. Unfortunately, they are escape artists and prolific breeders. That makes them a major headache for Government Wildlife Ecologist Mark Outerbridge.

Dr Outerbridge has conducted groundbreaking research on another terrapin called the diamondback that is Bermuda’s only native terrapin. Unfortunately, during the study he found that sliders, an import, are waging war on the diamondbacks.

Dr Outerbridge will be talking about his diamondback terrapin research and battles with the red-eared sliders on Wednesday, as part of the Bermuda’s College’s annual Corange Science Week.

“Right now I have counted 126 diamondbacks,” said Dr Outerbridge. “There are thousands of red-eared sliders on the Island.”

The diamondbacks live in one small pond in Bermuda and are now on the protected species list. Sadly, the sliders live in that same small pond, and just about every other pond and marsh in Bermuda, and number in the thousands. They compete with the diamondbacks for food and nesting space. Sick pet sliders released, or escaped, into the wild also brings the diamondbacks the threat of disease.

“What we don’t want to see is people collecting diamondback terrapins for pets,” said Dr Outerbridge. “They are on the protected species list and every adult is invaluable as a breeder. The population is very small.”

Red-eared sliders are actually on the banned list in many places such as Florida and Australia because they are such a menace to other terrapin species. In some places like Florida they can breed with native slider species and hybridise. Luckily, this isn’t happening Bermuda as the red-eared sliders and diamondbacks can not interbreed.

Dr Outerbridge stopped short of asking people not to buy them. Instead, he advised people to research the pet they were getting. Red-eared sliders can live up to 30 years. They need to be outdoors in a pond with a dry area where they can reach to sun themselves. There need to have a sturdy fence around the pond that is high and does not have right angles which the sliders use to climb out.

“You can keep them indoors in a tank, but it is messy,” he said. “And the idea that they never get bigger than their tank is a myth. I pulled out of a pond that was at least a foot long and weighed seven pounds.”

He begged people not to release them into the wild when they tired of the pet.

“Give them to someone else, or bring them to the Aquarium where they will be humanely euthanised,” he said.

Dr Outerbridge is just in the process of tying up loose ends on his PhD with University College Cork in Cork Ireland where he worked under Professor John Davenport one of Europe’s foremost turtle experts. During Dr Outerbridge’s research he was able to show convincing evidence that diamondbacks are indeed native to Bermuda.

“I have recently been hired in government as the wildlife ecologist,” he said. “That is a brand new position with the Department of Conservation Services. I have been doing that since June.”

Dr Outerbridge will be giving a lecture about his diamondback terrapin research as part of Corange Science week on Wednesday at 6.30pm at the Bermuda College in the North Hall in room G301. Admission is free.