ANYONE WHO LIKES box turtles and occasionally crosses paths with one may be of help to John Abrams, a Berea College ecologist who supervises the Kentucky Box Turtle Project. His research, part of Berea’s Forestry Outreach program, is aimed at learning more about the state’s threatened Eastern box turtle population, its distribution, movements, home range, growth and mortality. “In my estimation they are a species in pretty drastic decline,” Abrams says.