An ecosystem engineer at Hundred Acre Hollows
Hundred Acre Hollows is home to 467 active gopher tortoise burrows. Helping maintain the habitat for these tortoises is a big part of our organization’s mission. The gopher tortoise is a burrowing animal. It is the state tortoise of Florida and is a threatened species. It is also a “keystone” species because over 360 different animals depend on it for survival, using the burrows for shelter from predators, the heat, cold, or fire. These commensal species include the Florida mouse, gopher frog, gopher cricket, burrowing owl, snakes, birds, insects, skunks, rabbits, raccoons, and armadillos.
The gopher tortoise is native to the southeastern United States, where it inhabits scrub oak forests and pine flatwoods. This quiet, solitary creature spends about 80% of its life in the safety of its burrow. While many other species may share the burrow, gopher tortoises do not share it with each other—each prefers its own space. When they emerge, it’s usually to forage, and the surrounding area often looks like it’s been neatly trimmed. Their diet is diverse and includes grasses, leaves, legumes, saw palmetto berries, and various fruits.
Female gopher tortoises lay their eggs on the sandy apron just outside their burrows, choosing the warm, sunlit soil to help incubate them. The eggs, roughly the size of ping pong balls, face many threats—predators like raccoons and bobcats often dig them up. Sadly, only about one in every hundred eggs will survive to hatch, making each baby tortoise a small miracle of survival.