In a slow decline // Student follows the trail of rare Blanding's turtle

Researcher Cory Rubin regularly prowls two DuPage County forestpreserves using radio signals to track animals that don't move fastor go far but still are hard to find.

Rubin, a University of Illinois doctoral student, is part of aprogram studying the survival of the rare Blanding's turtle - ayellow-throated native species that is hanging on in several DuPageCounty parks.

But the turtles apparently remain only in small numbers. Rubinhas found only 50 adults in the two preserves since starting hisresearch in 1996.

Most turtles found and tagged with radio transmitters are adults- an indication that few young survive to maturity.

The research also …