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Endangered turtle count doubles in four years

In Sumatra, hundreds of adult box turtles await export. The holding pen contains an average day's volume of trade at this particular site  

In China's Guang Zhou City, bins of freshwater turtles stretch for blocks in the market district.

Ten years ago, the turtle market in China was hardly sprawling. The trade took off in 1989, when Chinese currency came into play with other Asian countries. Now freshwater turtles are a booming industry, much to the concern of the conservation community.

The number of the world's critically endangered freshwater turtles has more than doubled in the past four years, according to a report released today by TRAFFIC, The Wildlife Conservation Society and the Worldwide Fund For Nature. With three-fourths of Asia's freshwater turtles now listed as threatened, and more than half considered endangered, conservation groups are sounding an alarm.

"The trade has taken off so quickly that it has been difficult for people to take notice and take action," said Craig Hoover, senior program officer for TRAFFIC in North America. "It's quite amazing. You go into the markets in China and you find very few native species, because most of the native species have already been fully exploited."

  MESSAGE BOARD
 

While freshwater and marine turtles share problems such as habitat loss, poaching and hunting for their shells, human consumption and pollution, their smaller cousins may be in even more serious straits.

Yet, freshwater turtles have not received the same conservation attention as sea turtles. "Sea turtles have received more attention not only because of their wide ranges but because their plight has been known to us for decades and they have become more charismatic species than many of the much smaller freshwater turtles," said Sabri Zain, communications manager for TRAFFIC.

Once abundant in the food markets of southern China, the big-headed turtle is now a rare sight  

The report, which follows the first Workshop on Trade in Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles in Asia held last year in Cambodia, documents the threats facing the species and recommends actions to address the growing crisis.

"By and large people had no idea that the trade this largely affected as many species and poses such a great extinction threat," Hoover said.

The World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species, released last week, recorded 24 turtle species worldwide as critically endangered, compared to 10 species in the 1996 assessment. "With the number of critically endangered species more than doubling in just the last four years, it is evident that the situation is deteriorating rapidly," said lead author Peter Paul van Dijk.

Participants in the workshop urged that all recognized turtle species native to Asia be listed in Appendix II of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species and that some species be transferred to Appendix I, which would prohibit all international trade of the species.

That call was met in part by a proposal to list all nine species of Asian box turtles under Appendix II of CITES, which was adopted in April.

But enforcement continues to be a major problem.

"The CITES listing doesn't necessarily equal protection in practical terms," Hoover said.

There is a lack of funding and staff for enforcement in most Asian counties, he explained, and many border patrol officers are not able to identify threatened turtle species.

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved




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