It’s a brilliant little innovation that saves countless turtles.
The Japanese have always been renowned for their futuristic approach to life along with their engineering prowess.
Their newest infrastructural advancement has been created to protect one of the world’s most lovable little creatures.
Rail workers in the country have designed a new system of miniature tunnels that run underneath the country’s rail network, with the aim of ensuring the safety of turtles who find themselves getting trapped and killed in between the train tracks.
Turtles getting killed by trains has become a regular occurrence in the Nara Prefecture, located in the centre of the country.
The rail workers teamed up with a nearby aquarium to create the shallow tunnels that allow the reptiles to walk beneath the tracks on their way to the nearby ocean.
The new tunnel system will also inevitably lead to less delays and travel disruptions as fewer turtles get squashed by moving point blades in between blade switches.
According to the Japan Times, disruptions of train operation caused by turtles were reported 13 times in Kyoto and Nara between 2002 and 2014.
The rail staff overall are now trained to inspect areas around the tracks and regularly survey the ditches surrounding the rail network for rogue reptiles.
Any that are found are returned to aquarium staff.
Within the first month of the new tunnel system, at least ten turtles were saved from untimely death.
In a world where sustainability and wildlife preservation is near the top of the agenda list, this story coming out of Japan shows just how pivotal a little bit of innovation and teamwork can be.
A similar scheme was introduced in the UK in the last few years.
Hedgehogs have been vulnerable to extinction for the past decade or so in this country, and a lot of conservationists have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the risk of losing our prickly friends.
Volunteers found a simple yet effective way of helping hedgehogs get around.
‘Hedgehog highways’ were developed as a network of holes through fences and hedges in neighbourhoods and rural areas around the country.
With the average hog travelling 2km a night, providing easy access routes allows them to find food and mates while staying out of harm’s way – and it’s something we can all easily support at home, as this article in The Guardian from 2020 explains.
Similarly, in Costa Rica, the Sloth Conservation Foundation began installing rope bridges to help the slow-moving creatures can traverse the rainforest without connecting with power lines or falling onto busy roads.
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