On a recent trip to Turkey, CGO Ecology's Chris Gleed-Owen visited the DEKAMER research and rehabilitation centre at Iztuzu Beach in Turkey. Situated behind an important turtle nesting beach near Dalyan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, DEKAMER rescues injured marine turtles and nurses them back to health. Most of the turtles are loggerheads, but green turtles and the occasional leatherback are known from the area.

Britain's rarest reptile, the smooth snake, is only found in a handful of southern English counties. Heathland loss during the 20th century has seen them disappear from whole counties such as Devon. However, a project coordinated by Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) has been reintroducing smooth snakes to a heathland nature reserve in Devon.

CGO Ecology has been tasked with moving a population of reptiles to save them from a quarry development. Several hundred common lizards and a small number of grass snakes are expected in the capture exercise that will take place in July 2010. The reptiles occupy an area of pasture and quarry slopes at the Headon china clay quarry complex near Cornwood on the southwest edge of Dartmoor. A new phase of quarry working means they will have to be moved to a restored slope adjacent to the nearby Portsworthy works, where gorse removal has increased the habitat's carrying capacity for reptiles.

CGO Ecology has a new employee, Sarah Atkinson, who has joined us an an Ecologist on a short-term contract to work on the A338 Spur Road reptile translocation. Sarah graduated from Plymouth University in 2008 with a BSc (Hons) in Wildlife Conservation.

Major building works planned at Seaford College, West Sussex, have necessitated the translocation of a population of slow-worms. The school has an impressive walled garden, thought to be Elizabethan, which is somewhat overgrown around the edges. This currently provides ideal habitat for a population of slow-worms.