TYLERTOWN, Miss.—On a clear, hot summer afternoon along the Bogue Chitto creek at Walker’s Bridge Water Park in southern Mississippi, Noah Devros dives into the murky water with a flashlight and cheap plastic dive mask. He emerges holding a small turtle.
Devros is a graduate student and researcher from the University of Southern Mississippi, and he’s working to tag and inventory the Pearl River map turtle, which in July was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The rule effectively makes it illegal to harm the animals in any way.
Armed with these new protections, this turtle could be the catalyst for halting a huge and controversial engineering project upriver in Jackson, Mississippi, known locally as “One Lake.”…