Pippa’s Army Missing Tortoise Tips

• As soon as you notice your tortoise is gone, get everyone in the house together and ask them to help search the surrounding area. If you’re outside, you want to carefully search each part of the ground; tortoises can seem invisible if you’re not looking carefully.

• Tortoises are burrowing creatures, so you want to keep an eye out for signs of burrowing. A big warning sign is that the weather has suddenly changed to get much warmer or much colder – that’s a real trigger for tortoises to start burrowing. Check around the edges of rocks and any plants, in particular, they’re a tortoise’s favourite spot.

• Look under things, inside anything they can crawl into, wait for the morning sun as it might bring the tortoise out of hiding.

• Alert your neighbours and ask them to check their gardens and any sheds or outbuildings they may have.

• Share to all local Facebook groups and to the Nextdoor app.

• If still not found, put posters up and leaflets through local neighbouring doors.