we have sliders and all sorts of turtles here where i live and our climate is way more harsh than over there. corns, kings, box turtles and all kind of things would take off if enough were loose to found a breeding population. heck, in florida, we have yemen chams and burms breeding and it gets pretty cold there. they are trying to eradicate iguanas from many parts of florida...it seems that freezing temps don't phase them..

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...XD

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Ah but florida is alot warmer there in spring,summer,autumn..not sure of winter lol... wheras in england its cold all the time..freezing in late autumn-early spring n then just not hot the rest of the time welcome to the uk

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it's all about the low temps really. i mean like in kentucky we have corns snake and it gets below zero f commonly all winter. as long as the summer time temps are good enough and the season is long enough, temperate animals can live and thrive.

your average temps are a lot like ours. it gets a bit hotter here in the summer but it gets way colder here in the winter. if anythin our weather is much harsher where i live than say in london area.

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We would never get 6 weeks of stable temperatures in the summer here of a temperature high enough for corn snakes to breed, but I am pretty sure that they could survive here all year around, with a slightly longer brumation period, if they could find enough food to put the weight on for it.

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yeah, in july and august in say, frankfort, ky, it averages in the mid 80's f. so it gets a bit hotter than say, london in the summer.

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You're living in the wrong part of England! Down here in the sunny south it's still quite mild and my turts, apart from one who was sick recently, are still outside in the pond and doing well, and these are species from the southern US. They went out in the first week of April, and I'm only just thinking of bringing them in.

The "wild" ones in local lakes stay out all year of course and seem to have no problem hibernating through cold periods, exactly as they would in their native habitat.

And there are turts living in public parks as far north as Blackpool and Liverpool where I assume it gets quite a bit colder than here (never been there so I don't know for sure!), and they manage OK too.

Turts from temperate regions are pretty tough creatures and don't neccessarily need the "molly-coddling" that we assume they do.

It's interesting what HABU says about harsh winters where he lives, I had an argument earlier this year with a guy on a well known American turt forum, it ended rather badly as he was insisting that our "severe" winters and constant cold conditions (apparently a friend told him it was always freezing here, he'd never been to the UK himself of course!) were not suitable for keeping turts outdoors. With 20 years experience of successfully keeping turts outdoors for most of the year I had to disagree with him.

This guy lives in Florida, now I've never been there either but I've seen the news reports from Florida showing Shuttle launches delayed by freezing conditions, launch towers covered in thick ice that has to be hacked off, that's something you don't see here too often!
That's what I would call extreme cold, yet the native population of turts survives those conditions perfectly well.

The real difference is in the summers, we don't get the prolonged high temperatures necessary for the turts to breed successfully. The eggs need up to 100 days at constant temps at least in the high 20°Cs , and at the moment that just doesn't happen here in any part of the country, so whilst wild populations may well mate and even lay fertilized eggs, there's no way those eggs are going to hatch successfully without artificial incubation.

the closest place here in the states climate-wise, to say to london is western oregon. it's average temps, year long are about the same. they have a few herps.
you guys have such a mild climate compared to average highs and lows to most places here. it doesn't get too cold or hot there. places here that have the same summer temps as you, get way colder in the winter and ones that have the same winter temps here get way warmer in the summer. plus western oregon gets lots of rain.

Amphibians and Reptiles of Oregon

Salem, Oregon Average Temperatures

glaciation probibly affected the herps of britain. i bet a lot of herps from other places could live there and thrive and would not affect the native wildlife very much. garter snake and racers and a lot of rat snakes like the black rat would thrive i'm sure. they like disturbed areas.

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a lake near me has dozens of turtles in it you see them all basking on logs in the summer

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0.1.0 common boa
0.0.1 hermans
0.0.1 missippi map turtle
0.0.1 bearded dragon
1.0.0 leopard gecko
0.1.0 burmese python
1.0.0 doberman (duke)

It did, I understand some European turt species were native here before the last ice age. They died out of course, and by the time temps had risen sufficiently after the ice age the land bridge to the European mainland was gone, so there was no way for them to come back!