topic: Turtles

topic: Turtles

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In Bangladesh, olive ridley turtles break 4-year record with 53% increase in eggs
- Bangladesh has seen the highest number of olive ridley turtle eggs this year, a conservationist group says.
- The olive ridley’s main nesting ground is different islands of the country’s southeastern district, Cox’s Bazar, in the Bay of Bengal.
- The key reasons behind the success are extensive conservation action across beaches and an awareness program among local people.
- Conservationists say they believe success might decline if the current pace of tourism and related infrastructure development is not checked, as they appear to disturb ecosystems.

As a megaport rises in Cameroon, a delicate coastal ecosystem ebbs
- The deepwater port at Kribi, Cameroon, is a massive project, begun in 2011 and slated for completion in 2040.
- It aims to decongest the existing port at Douala and become a trade hub for all Central African countries.
- The port is located just a few kilometers from Cameroon’s only marine protected area, home to green, olive ridley and hawksbill turtles.
- While aiming to improve the country’s economy, the port has generated unintended environmental consequences, intensifying coastal erosion, increasing human pressure and pollution, and endangering marine life and local fishers’ livelihoods.

Spotted softshell turtle release boosts reptile conservation in Vietnam
- The rewilding of 50 captive-bred spotted softshell turtles has sparked hope among conservationists for the future of the rare and threatened species in Vietnam, a country where softshell turtles are widely considered a culinary delicacy.
- Described by scientists as recently as 2019, the species is considered critically endangered throughout its range in China and Southeast Asia due to hunting for human consumption and habitat loss.
- The reintroduction of the young turtles is the first rewilding of offspring reared at a dedicated turtle conservation breeding facility in northern Vietnam to safeguard Vietnam’s rare and threatened amphibian and reptile species.
- Turtle conservationists say that while it will be a long and perilous road to recovery for the species in Vietnam amid persistent threats, the work to preserve the species is a positive step toward changing people’s view of freshwater turtles as primarily a food item and curbing hunting pressure not only on this species, but many others as well.

Riverine communities join forces to preserve threatened Amazon turtles
- Residents of 32 communities in Juruti, western Pará state, organize to preserve species such as the Amazon turtle (Podocnemis expansa), tracajá (P. unifilis), pitiú (P. sextuberculata) and irapuca (P. erythrocephala).
- Monitoring beaches during the spawning season to collect eggs and then take them to a protected hatchery are the main actions of riverside dwellers. The numbers are on the rise: Some communities have already protected 300 nests in a single season.
- The Brazilian Amazon is a priority area for chelonian conservation, with 21 species described by scientists. Fourteen species live in Juruti, one of which is endemic.
- Despite being banned by environmental legislation, consumption of turtle eggs and meat still seems to be part of local traditions, contributing to reduce the number of individuals; mining and dam construction projects also threat the survival of the species.

Nile Basin farmers grow food forests to restore wetlands and bring back a turtle
- Sugarcane is a widely grown crop in the Nile Basin, but its destructive effects on soils, water resources and biodiversity have become increasingly apparent.
- As the thirsty crop draws down water resources, aquatic species like the critically endangered Nubian flapshell turtle suffer a loss of habitat, forage and nesting sites.
- In an effort to revive soils, diversify diets and incomes, and boost water levels that many animals rely on, communities are implementing agroforestry projects in lieu of monocultures.
- The resulting “food forests” attract an array of wildlife while refilling wetlands and river systems where the culturally important flapshell turtles swim.

Cambodia sea turtle nests spark hope amid coastal development & species decline
- Conservationists in Cambodia have found nine sea turtle nests on a remote island off the country’s southwest coast, sparking hopes for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas).
- It’s the first time sea turtle nests have been spotted in the country in a decade of species decline.
- Two nests have been excavated to assess hatching success; conservationists estimate the nests could hold as many as 1,000 eggs.
- Globally, sea turtle populations are declining, largely due to hunting for food and the animals’ shells, used in jewelry; other threats to sea turtles include tourism development, pollution and climate change.

Study reveals turtles’ millennia-old food affair with North African seagrass
- Researchers have traced the 3,000-year-old “food footprints” of endangered green sea turtles around the Mediterranean.
- By comparing turtle bone samples from Bronze and Iron Age archaeological sites to skin samples from turtles they’re tracking by satellite today, they’ve uncovered turtles’ enduring preference for the same sea meadows.
- The findings highlight the importance of protecting these underwater meadows, which face degradation due to conversion, pollution and climate change.

Tag team effort brings tech to aid leatherback turtle conservation
- In Puerto Rico, scientists and conservationists are deploying drones and satellite tags to gather data about leatherback sea turtles.
- Leatherback sea turtles, the largest species of turtles in the world, have seen their populations decline due to poaching, habitat loss and bycatch in fishing nets.
- Two teams are now collaborating to use drones to identify nesting sites in Maunabo in Puerto Rico.
- They’re also tagging the animals to understand more about their migration patterns once they leave the nesting beach.

Record year for olive ridley turtles in Bangladesh as conservation work pays off
- Bangladesh has recorded the highest number of olive ridley turtle eggs this nesting season, a conservationist group says.
- The species’ main nesting grounds in Bangladesh are the various small islands off the southeastern district of Cox’s Bazar in the Bay of Bengal.
- Extensive conservation action across the area and the awareness programs carried out among local communities are the key reasons behind the success.
- However, the growth of the tourism industry and infrastructure development continue to pose major threats to the turtles and their nesting grounds.

Death of last female Yangtze softshell turtle signals end for ‘god’ turtle
- The last known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle died in April of unknown causes, leaving only two males as the final known living members of a species that has for years been teetering on the brink of extinction.
- “We are devastated,” says the Asian Turtle Program, an NGO working to protect the Yangtze turtle and its habitat.
- The only hope for the species lies in the possibility that a few of these giant creatures may still roam, unknown, in lakes and rivers in Vietnam or Laos.

The Mexican family who gave up fishing to monitor and rescue sea turtles
- The Kino Bay Turtle Group is made up of a family of former fishers from the state of Sonora in northwestern Mexico.
- The group keeps a close watch on sea turtles in the La Cruz Lagoon, a Ramsar site spanning 6,665 hectares (about 16,470 acres), monitoring the animals, rescuing any that become entangled and educating the public about their importance.
- The group has captured and logged data on more than 800 sea turtles; it is now training a team of Indigenous Comcáac youth to form their own turtle group and begin monitoring and conservation work along a 10-kilometer (6-mile) stretch of coast in Sonora.

In Nepal, a turtle that rose from the dead makes another grand entrance
- Researchers have discovered a population of black softshell turtles in a wetland in southern Nepal, raising hopes for its conservation.
- The critically endangered species was previously thought to occur in only a handful of ponds in Bangladesh and India, and was so rare that it was briefly declared extinct in the wild in 2002.
- The new discovery adds to other recent findings of the black softshell turtle in the Brahmaputra River that runs through India and Bangladesh.
- Experts say the wetland and river populations are less prone than the pond-confined ones to the threats of fungal infection and inbreeding, and can form the basis of an ecotourism industry benefiting locals.

Heat-sensing drone cameras spy threats to sea turtle nests
- Researchers used heat-detecting cameras mounted on drones to monitor sea turtle nesting on a beach in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
- Using thermal infrared imagery, researchers detected 20% more turtle nesting activity than on-the-ground patrollers did. The drone imagery also revealed 39 nest predators and other animals, as well as three people, assumed to be poachers, that were not detected by patrollers.
- In Costa Rica, turtle eggs are sold locally and illegally for their alleged aphrodisiac properties. Six out of the seven species of sea turtles are threatened globally, and protecting their eggs is one of the easiest ways to ensure they endure into the future.
- The lead author says these methods are still rather expensive and aren’t a replacement for patrollers but could be an extra tool that they can use to get a big improvement on night patrols, especially on nesting beaches that are dangerous and inaccessible.

Rare turtles hatch from eggs rescued from flood-prone Nepal riverbank
- Conservationists in Nepal successfully rescued and hatched hundreds of Indian narrow-headed softshell turtles (Chitra indica) from a riverbank in Chitwan National Park.
- The nesting sites were hit by a flash flood three weeks after the eggs were removed; 375 of the 496 eggs hatched successfully at Chitwan’s gharial breeding center after nearly seven weeks.
- Narrow-headed softshell turtles are an endangered species, threatened by hunting for their meat and consumption of their eggs, as well as degradation of their habitat, but aren’t the subject of any dedicated conservation programs in Nepal.
- Conservationists have called on the government to focus more attention on the species, saying it wouldn’t cost much and would require only the will to act.

In Indonesia’s West Sumbawa, tide turns on taste for turtle eggs
- Consumption of turtle eggs is widespread in Indonesia’s West Sumbawa district, where they’re served to guests of honor such as local government officials.
- All seven species of sea turtle are listed as threatened worldwide, with egg poaching a key cause of endangerment.
- West Sumbawa officials have pledged to stamp out poaching and consumption of sea turtle eggs.

Turtle DNA database traces illegal shell trade to poaching hotspots
- Critically endangered hawksbill turtles have been hunted for their patterned shells for centuries to make tortoiseshell jewelry and decorative curios.
- The exploitation and trade pushed the species to the brink of extinction; despite international bans on killing and trading the turtles and their parts, persistent demand continues to stoke illegal trade.
- Experts say they hope the launch of a new global turtle DNA database coupled with DNA-based wildlife forensics techniques can turn the tables on poachers and illegal traders.
- The new resource, called ShellBank, will enable law enforcement authorities to trace confiscated tortoiseshell products to known turtle breeding locations to help them crack down on poaching and the illegal trade.

For 20 years, Comoros had only 1 national park. It’s now creating 5 more
- Comoros, an archipelagic nation in the western Indian Ocean, is dramatically expanding its network of protected areas (PAs) from one to six, including three new marine protected areas (MPAs).
- The idea is to replicate the co-management approach at Mohéli National Park, the country’s first and currently only national park, created in 2001 as an MPA.
- However, Comoros’s experience with Mohéli provided no clear blueprint for supporting communities whose traditional rights are curtailed because of the protected areas, or for sustainably funding for such a vast PA network.

200 mysterious sea turtle deaths: Q&A with Kenyan fisherman and turtle rescuer Daniel Katana
- Near the town of Marereni, smack in the middle of Kenya’s Indian Ocean coastline, a group of local volunteers has been protecting sea turtles and planting mangroves for nearly two decades.
- In the past two years, however, the Marereni Biodiversity Conservancy has documented alarming spikes in sea turtle deaths and in turtles with fibropapilloma tumors, as well as a decline in sea turtle nests.
- While the causes have yet to be determined, conservancy members suspect the sea turtles’ problems may be associated with pollution from nearby salt mines.
- Mongabay interviewed the group’s CEO, Daniel Masha Katana, about how it is responding to the current threats to sea turtles.

Biologist fighting plastic pollution to save sea turtles wins ‘Green Oscar’
- Estrela Matilde, a conservation biologist and executive director of the NGO Fundação Príncipe, has won a Whitley Award, for her work to save sea turtles in the tiny African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe.
- Fundação Príncipe has been working since 2015 to conserve the island of Príncipe’s biodiversity by working with the local community to develop alternative livelihoods that reduce pressure on resources and protect wildlife.
- Matilde’s attention has turned to documenting and tackling plastic pollution after a conservation initiative that put cameras on sea turtles revealed just how much plastic Príncipe’s marine life encounters.
- She plans to use the award money to document via GPS the tides of plastic pollution reaching Príncipe, and to scale up a livelihood project in which local women make trinkets out of the plastic that washes up on the island’s beaches.

Shell of a comeback: New app, awareness campaigns bring hope for hawksbill turtles
- Hawksbill turtles are due for a status assessment on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
- One of the largest threats to global hawksbill recovery is the continued illegal tortoiseshell trade in Japan, a major consumer, and Indonesia, a top exporter.
- Conservation successes include a dramatic decrease in tortoiseshell sales in Colombia, previously one of the largest shell sellers in the Western Hemisphere.

‘Resilient’ leatherback turtles can survive fishing rope entanglements. Mostly
- Leatherback turtles are highly vulnerable to getting entangled in lobster pot fishing gear off the coast of Massachusetts.
- A new study now shows that they can largely survive these entanglements — if they’re reached by rescuers in time, and their injuries are treatable.
- However, researchers say the lobster fishery must move toward a ropeless model to ensure that leatherbacks, and other marine animals, can survive over the long term.

Indigenous Comcáac turtle group saves sea turtles in Mexico’s Gulf of California
- The Grupo Tortuguero Comcáac, the Sea Turtle Group of the Comcáac people, in El Desemboque de los Seris is fighting to increase the population of sea turtles, a sacred animal, in the Gulf of California.
- In the past five years they have managed to release more than 8,000 olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) hatchlings along 14 kilometers (9 miles) of the Mancha Blanca and El Faro beach.
- State funding for the project is limited, however the turtle rescue group does not see this as a stumbling block, at times working 12 hour shifts to guard turtles, monitor the area and manage logistics.

A royal release: Cambodia returns 51 rare turtles to the wild
- Conservation authorities in Cambodia released 51 critically endangered southern river terrapins into the country’s Sre Ambel River last November.
- The program is part of wider efforts to bring back a species that was previously thought to be extinct in Cambodia.
- The terrapin, known locally as the royal turtle, was historically hunted as a delicacy, but is also threatened by habitat loss due to deforestation and sand dredging.
- The latest released batch of 31 females and 20 males have been tagged to keep track of their behavior in the wild.

Guinea-Bissau turtle hatchery addresses unusual problem of too many eggs
- Five percent of all green sea turtles nest on the beaches of tiny Poilão Island, in the Bijagós Archipelago off Guinea-Bissau, leading to some nests being laid on top of each other.
- Sea turtle monitors are rescuing these “doomed clutches” of eggs and relocating them to less crowded beaches.
- In the future, they hope the sea turtle hatchery will provide educational opportunities that strengthen protection of sea turtles.

‘I feel obligated to protect them’: A lifelong love affair with Guinea-Bissau’s turtles
- Biologist Castro Barbosa has spent his career working to protect the green sea turtles that breed in Guinea-Bissau’s Bjiagós islands.
- The Bijagós are the most important sea turtle breeding grounds in Africa — 5% of the global green turtle population breeds on the island of Poilâo alone.
- Turtles are threatened by accidental capture in fishing nets, hunting, and overharvesting of their eggs, but traditional restriction of access to sacred islands in the Bijagós has protected these breeding grounds.
- Barbosa’s work monitoring turtles and their breeding grounds respects and complements these traditional protections.

‘Tis the season’ for cold-stunned sea turtles — and their rescue — on Cape Cod
- As cold weather sets in across New England each year, juvenile sea turtles, drawn to the globally warmed summer waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, are cold-stunned. If not rescued they die.
- Trained volunteers have already brought more than 100 turtles to the New England Aquarium Sea Turtle Rescue Center this autumn. The number of cold-stunned turtles at Cape Cod has been rising during the last decade, with some seasons logging more than 1,000 stranded turtles — many of them critically endangered Kemp’s ridleys.
- Globally, most cold-stunning events occur on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts: especially in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida and Texas. Last year, more than 10,000 turtles were stranded in Texas alone. Cold-stun events have also been reported in Uruguay, Spain, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, France, and the UAE.
- On Cape Cod, the animals are stabilized at the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Center, then transported to longer term care facilities across the U.S., often flown there by volunteer pilots working with Turtles Fly Too. As extreme weather events and ocean warming increase due to climate change, experts predict cold-stunning events will increase too.

Galápagos census looks at impacts on turtles during and after COVID lockdown
- The suspension of tourism activities around the world as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic gave researchers the chance to answer an important question: What impact does tourism have on wildlife populations?
- In Ecuador’s famed Galápagos Islands, researchers have for more than a year now been carrying out a turtle census on Tortuga Bay, a beach popular with tourists, but which was off-limits during lockdown.
- With tourists now returning, the researchers have been able to record tangible changes in the number and behavior of the turtles on the beach, although a full analysis is only expected to begin in December.

Technology and tradition team up to watch over a sacred island’s sea turtles
- Uninhabited Poilão Island in Guinea-Bissau is Africa’s most important nesting ground for green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas).
- Local people have long regarded the island as sacred and have limited access to it, which has kept its environment in a near-pristine state.
- The island is now protected as part of a marine national park, a compromise in which local people granted researchers and some other outsiders access to the island in an exchange that included employment monitoring turtles.
- Researchers and local people now work together to study the turtles with the aim of better protecting them.

Sea turtles: Can these great marine migrators navigate rising human threats?
- Humanity is quickly crossing critical planetary boundaries that threaten sea turtle populations, their ecosystems and, ultimately, the “safe operating space” for human existence.
- Sea turtles have survived millions of years, but marathon migrations put them at increasing risk for the additive impacts of adverse anthropogenic activity on land and at sea, including impacts from biodiversity loss, climate change, ocean acidification, land-use change, pollution (especially plastics), and more.
- The synergistic effects of anthropogenic threats and the return on conservation interventions are largely unknown. But analysts understand that their efforts will need to focus on both nesting beaches and ocean migration routes, while acting on a host of adverse impacts across many of the nine known planetary boundaries.
- Avoiding extinction will require adaptation by turtles and people, and the evolution of new, innovative conservation practices. Key strategies: boosting populations to weather growing threats, rethinking how humanity fishes, studying turtle life cycles (especially at sea), safeguarding habitat, and deeply engaging local communities.

Saving sea turtles in the ‘Anthropause’: Successes and challenges on the beach
- The COVID-19 pandemic has posed tough challenges for sea turtle conservation projects across the planet.
- Conservationists describe how economic issues have put turtles and themselves at risk from poachers, while travel restrictions have crippled operations in Costa Rica and Malaysia.
- The lull in human seashore activities also revealed that tourism pressure affects nesting turtle behavior in the Mediterranean, a study shows.
- In Lebanon, raising awareness has been key to turtle conservation successes despite the country’s economic collapse, conservationists said.

Reptile traffickers trawl scientific literature, target newly described species
- The descriptions and locations of new reptile species featured in scientific literature are frequently being used by traders to quickly hunt down, capture and sell these animals, allowing them to be monetized for handsome profits and threatening biodiversity.
- New reptile species are highly valued by collectors due to their novelty, and often appear on trade websites and at trade fairs within months after their first description in scientific journals.
- In the past 20 years, the Internet, combined with the ease and affordability of global travel, have made the problem of reptile trafficking rampant. Some taxonomists now call for restricted access to location information for the most in demand taxa such as geckos, turtles and pythons.
- Once a new species has been given CITES protection (typically a lengthy process), traders often keep the reptiles in “legal” commercial circulation by making false claims of “captive breeding” in order to launder wild-caught animals.

For Atlantic sea turtles, Sargasso Sea is home during the ‘lost years’
- In a new study, researchers tracked the movements of young green turtles and found that they navigated toward the Sargasso Sea, rather than drifting passively along the currents in the North Atlantic Ocean.
- While there have been theories and anecdotal evidence that turtle hatchlings travel to the Sargasso Sea and spend their “lost years” in the region, this is the first study that uses satellite tracking to confirm that green turtles are indeed going there.
- A previous study by the same group of researchers also tracked the movements of loggerhead turtles into the Sargasso Sea, although their journeys were found to be more nuanced.
- Experts say the study draws attention to the importance of protecting the Sargasso Sea and tackling issues such as plastic pollution.

Time is running out for embattled Pacific leatherback sea turtles
- Marine biologists warn that the western Pacific leatherback could go extinct without immediate conservation measures and transnational cooperation.
- This subpopulation has decreased at a rate of 5.6% each year for an overall 80% decline over a 28-year period, according to a recent study.
- While the IUCN lists the species as a whole as vulnerable, the Pacific populations are critically endangered partly because of their long migratory routes through the high seas, where they face threats like drift gillnet fishing, ship strikes and pollution.
- The eastern Pacific subpopulation, which nests in Mexico and Central and South America, faces similar threats. Both populations are at high risk of extinction.

From penguins to sharks to whales, swimming in circles is a surprisingly common trait
- Many marine animals are intentionally swimming in circles consecutively at a relatively constant speed more than twice, according to a new study using data from movement trackers.
- The researchers say the behavior is surprising in part because swimming in a straight line is known to be the most efficient way to move about.
- They found some of the animals swim in circles during different activities, including foraging, courtship, navigation and even possibly geomagnetic observations.

Turtle conservation hits the SPOT in North Cyprus
- Green and loggerhead turtle nest counts have increased by 162% and 46% respectively in less than two decades on North Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
- The increase has been achieved through preventing nests being raided by dogs and foxes, and protecting the beaches from tourism development.
- Conservation begun by enthusiasts in 1983 is now organized by a local NGO, the Society for the Protection of Turtles (SPOT), in collaboration with scientists from the University of Exeter in the U.K. and the local Department of Environmental Protection.
- Many issues still impact the recovery of turtle populations: loggerheads are killed in fishing nets, while both species are affected by plastic pollution in a variety of ways.

Threats loom large over Amazon’s Arrau turtles, despite record number of hatchlings
- The Amazonian Chelonian Program counted 120,000 Arrau turtle hatchlings (Podocnemis expansa) in Cantão State Park in Brazil’s Tocantins state last year, a 300% increase from just four years earlier.
- But researchers also noticed changes in nesting behavior, including the choice of a new nesting beach, and eggs buried deeper in the sand.
- They suspect nearby fires forced the turtles to find a new nesting site, and warn of a potential gender imbalance in the population if the turtles continue to bury their eggs deeper.
- Other threats to the species include plans to widen the Araguaia and Tocantins rivers for freight ships, and the main problem that has plagued the species for centuries: hunting for human consumption.

The turtle egg that pinged back: Tracing a poaching pathway in Costa Rica
- A team of scientists has created 3D printed decoy sea turtle eggs, fitted with GPS trackers to follow the path of eggs stolen by poachers.
- In a recent study on the first trial run of these eggs, the team confirmed that most poached sea turtle eggs are traded locally.
- However, they also identified a much longer track — 137 kilometers, or 85 miles — that illuminated the pathway of what appears to be a much more organized trade system.
- Mongabay followed the hour-by-hour track of this egg to understand why sea turtle poaching still happens, and to learn what experts think can be done to stop it.

Lots of suspects but few leads in mystery sea turtle deaths in Sri Lanka
- Ten olive ridley sea turtles washed ashore on the beaches of Colombo, Sri Lanka, over a two-day period in early October, leaving experts puzzled about the cause of death.
- Necropsies conducted on several of the bodies show they appeared to have been healthy prior to death and exhibited none of the injuries consistent with entanglement in fishing nets.
- Initial suspicion also pointed to a recent oil spill from the MT New Diamond crude carrier, but experts say oceanic current and wind conditions make this unlikely.
- Another possible cause is blast fishing, which would explain the lack of external injuries, but doesn’t fit with known trends of blast fishing practice in the area where the bodies washed up.

As the Amazon burns, what happens to its biodiversity?
- More than 40% of fires in the Brazilian Amazon this year are burning in standing forests, with more than 4.6 million acres already impacted this year. While far from fully studied, such forest fires have major repercussions for flora and fauna.
- A study found, for example, that the abundance and types of dung beetle species alters in burned Amazon forests. Dung beetles play vital roles in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal. Other research detected declines in butterflies, specialist forest ant species and other litter-dwelling invertebrates, some birds, small mammals and snakes in newly burnt areas.
- Rainforest trees are especially vulnerable because fire is relatively new to the Amazon, and trees there have not developed fire resistance. A rainforest fire, burning through the forest for the first time, kills most small trees and seedlings and can kill 50% of large trees.
- Multiple fires over time continue reducing biodiversity. Some scientists fear that a combination of fires, increasing drought due to climate change, and deforestation could lead to a tipping point — with devastating impacts for the Amazon, which harbors 10% of the world’s biodiversity.

Back from the brink, baby Burmese roofed turtles make their debut
- Once considered extinct, the Burmese roofed turtle was brought back from the brink by an ambitious conservation program.
- The captive population is now approaching 1,000 turtles, and the species appears to be in little danger of biological extinction.
- Scientists have now published descriptions and photos of the hatchlings of this little-known river turtle.

Life among the turtles: Traditional people struggle inside an Amazon reserve
- The Brazilian Amazon’s Trombetas River is well known for its exceptional biodiversity, including nesting turtles. In 1979, to protect flora and fauna there, the REBIO Trombetas was founded; it’s a highly restrictive form of conservation unit where today only very limited economic activity is permitted.
- The two traditional communities inside the reserve — the Último Quilombo and Nova Esperança Quilombo (Afro-Brazilian communities of runaway slave descendants) — complain that the government has unfairly penalized them for conducting forest and river livelihoods including Brazil nut collecting and fishing.
- Local residents also contend that while they’re fined for such minor infractions, MRN, the world’s fourth largest bauxite mining company, located near the REBIO, has done extensive ecological damage due to ore ship traffic and water pollution, which severely impacts turtle populations.
- In fact, MRN’s mines, ore processing and bauxite waste lagoons are located inside the Saracá-Taquera National Forest, a protected area known as a FLONA, on the Trombetas River. MRN has been fined often for its environmental violations there, fines it has appealed and not yet paid; the firm says it’s operating within the law.

Brazilian Amazon drained of millions of wild animals by criminal networks: Report
- A new 140-page report is shining a bright light on illegal wildlife trafficking in the Brazilian Amazon. The study finds that millions of birds, tropical fish, turtles, and mammals are being plucked from the wild and traded domestically or exported to the U.S, EU, China, the Middle East and elsewhere. Many are endangered.
- This illicit international trade is facilitated by weak laws, weak penalties, inadequate government record keeping, poor law enforcement — as well as widespread corruption, bribery, fraud, forgery, money laundering and smuggling.
- While some animals are seized, and some low-level smugglers are caught, the organizers of this global criminal enterprise are rarely brought to justice.
- The report notes that this trafficking crisis needs urgent action, as the trade not only harms wildlife, but also decimates ecosystems and puts public health at risk. The researchers point out that COVID-19 likely was transmitted to humans by trafficked animals and that addressing the Brazilian Amazon wildlife trade could prevent the next pandemic.

Sea turtles often lose their way, but always reach their destination
- A new study found that green sea turtles rely on a “crude map” to navigate the ocean, often going several hundred kilometers off course before successfully arriving at their destination.
- Using GPS tracking devices, the research team tracked the migrations of female green turtles from nesting grounds on Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean to foraging grounds on isolated oceanic islands.
- Green turtles demonstrate a particularly high fidelity to foraging grounds, which made them an ideal species to study.
- The researchers say they hope their findings will help inform conservation efforts to protect green turtles, which are an endangered species.

Video: As COVID-19 curbs patrols in Nicaragua, turtle eggs risk being poached
- Conservation organization Paso Pacifico, which monitors Nicaragua’s Pacific beaches where thousands of threatened sea turtles lay their eggs every year, recently had to stop its activities due to the COVID-19 crisis.
- Park rangers fear that the lack of surveillance could lead to massive poaching of turtle eggs.
- Poaching has previously increased when the country’s political crises left the beaches unprotected.

After canoe chase, Madagascar authorities seize 144 endangered tortoises
- Authorities in Madagascar have seized 144 radiated tortoises from poachers in the country’s south, in the biggest tortoise trafficking bust in the country since 2018.
- Radiated tortoises (Astrochelys radiata), a critically endangered species, are illegal to collect or trade; most of the 144 were adults targeted for their meat.
- The tortoises are being cared for at a recovery facility, but may not be returned to the wild anytime soon; trafficking has increased so much in recent years that conservation groups engaged in the rescue of tortoises have stopped all wild releases.
- Experts warn of a likely increase in poaching in Madagascar’s south, where radiated tortoises are found, as a result of the economic slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Turtles and tortoises in trouble: More than half of all species face extinction
- More than half of the world’s turtle and tortoise species are now threatened with extinction, according to a new study published by a group of 51 global turtle and tortoise experts.
- Loss of habitat is the biggest threat to turtles and tortoises globally. Other threats include the pet trade, overconsumption for food and medicine, pollution, invasive species, and climate change.
- Preventing turtle extinctions this century requires protecting their remaining habitat, the authors write, particularly limited nesting habitats.
- Individuals also have a role to play in safeguarding turtle and tortoise survival worldwide by being aware of the risks involved in the pet, food and medicine trades, keeping dogs under control in important turtle habitats, and keeping off-road vehicles away from sensitive beaches and desert areas where turtles roam and nest.

Brazil could dynamite Amazon dolphin, turtle habitat for industrial waterway
- Brazil plans to excavate and dredge many millions of cubic meters of material, including the ecologically sensitive Lourencão Rocks, to create an industrial shipping channel on the Tocantins River in the Amazon. This article includes rarely seen video images of some of the endemic and threatened fish living in the Tocantins River rapids.
- Citing cost considerations, São Paulo-based DTA Engenharia plans to dump more than 5.6 million cubic meters of sand inside the Tocantins riverbanks, where Amazonian turtles now lay their eggs. The endangered Araguaian river dolphin would also be impacted.
- In September 2019, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, identified dozens of mistakes in DTA Engenharia’s environmental impact studies, which failed to list a dozen endangered fish, ignored the specialized riverine rock environment, and didn’t study turtles in most affected areas.
- IBAMA ordered DTA to redo fish and turtle studies, with new studies conducted on local traditional fisherfolk’s fishing practices. Six fisherfolk village associations near the Lourencão Rocks (35 kilometers of which are due to be dynamited and dredged) warn that the fishery and the unique traditional culture it supports are in peril.

An armada of turtles, caught on drone cam, flocks to the Great Barrier Reef
- New drone video shows thousands of endangered green turtles swimming ashore to Raine Island on the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef.
- Researchers captured this video to help survey the nesting turtle population, and in the process demonstrated that this technique is more effective than manually counting turtles from boats. They recorded 64,000 turtles nesting on Raine Island this season.
- There’s been an increase in the number of nesting green turtles around the world, including Raine Island, likely due to conservation efforts and fishing moratoriums.
- Team members at the Raine Island Recovery Project are working to restore the island’s beaches to ensure that green turtles can continue to safely nest there.

Slow and steady: Sea turtles mount a long-term recovery
- In many locations around the world, various sea turtle species are building more nests, which could result in more eggs and hatchlings.
- Lockdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic could provide some short-term benefits to nesting turtles and hatchlings by keeping people off the beaches, but experts don’t expect there to be any long-term effects.
- Experts believe that increased turtle nesting is mainly due to conservation efforts, better fishery management practices, and laws and regulations that forbid the hunting and trade of sea turtles and their eggs.
- Data show that the endangered green turtle is rebounding, but the leatherback turtle is continuing to decline.

A Philippine village on lockdown delivers nearly 300 turtle hatchlings to sea
- A village in the southern Philippines known as a nesting haven for critically endangered hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) has managed to protect and oversee the successful hatching of hundreds of eggs amid a community lockdown.
- The community released 299 hatchlings into the sea in the first two weeks of May and anticipate another 100 to be hatched before the end of the month, making it their most successful month in recent years.
- It’s a welcome resurgence for the town of Magsaysay, where the number of hatchlings has decreased significantly over the past few years, in part due to rising sea levels causing the eggs buried on the beach to spoil.
- The town has been under lockdown, known locally as a community quarantine, since March 17 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For nesting hawksbill turtles, this Philippine community is a sanctuary
- For centuries, hawksbill sea turtles have returned to a shoreline in the eastern Philippines to lay their eggs, even as the human community has expanded along the same stretch of beach.
- Hawksbill sea turtles’ low survival rates in the wild are caused by natural predators and, recently, exacerbated by rising sea levels. Another key threat is poaching for their meat and shells.
- Despite the lack of financial support, locals continue to look after the eggs, coming up with their own ways to protect them until the hatchlings are ready to be released back into the sea.

Study finds that sea turtles might be eating plastic because it smells like food
- In late 2018, researchers announced that they had found synthetic particles like microplastics in the intestinal tracts of every single sea turtle they’d studied in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediteranean Sea. New research might help to explain why turtles are consuming plastic in the first place.
- The way plastic looks might be one of its attractive features for marine species — for example, a plastic bag floating in the ocean might be mistaken for a tasty jellyfish by a hungry turtle.
- A study published in the journal Current Biology last week might point to another answer, at least when it comes to sea turtles: After just seven days in the ocean, plastic particles become so coated with algae and other microorganisms that they begin to smell like food.

‘Just incredible’ reptiles and amphibians of South Africa: Q&A with Tyrone Ping
- Growing up in the suburbs of the sub-tropical city of Durban in South Africa brought Tyrone Ping into daily contact with reptiles and amphibians, spurring a lifelong interest.
- Ping now travels around Southern Africa photographing and documenting the diversity of herps, i.e. reptiles and amphibians for a range of educational uses.
- Many species in the region are cryptic and yet to be properly described – species that have been known about for 20 years still don’t have names, he reports.
- Mongabay spoke with him via email to learn more about the region’s herpetofauna.

Coronavirus outbreak may spur Southeast Asian action on wildlife trafficking
- Illegal wildlife trafficking remains a perennial problem in Southeast Asia, but with the ongoing spread of the new coronavirus, there’s added impetus for governments in the region to clamp down on the illicit trade.
- The coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, has infected more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed more than 3,000, according to the World Health Organization.
- Initial findings, though not conclusive, have linked the virus to pangolins, the most trafficked mammal on Earth and one of the mainstays of the illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia that feeds the Chinese market.
- Despite having a regional cooperation framework designed to curb wildlife trafficking, Southeast Asian governments have yet to agree on and finance a sustainability plan to strengthen efforts against the illegal trade.

Killing gods: The last hope for the world’s rarest reptile
- After decades of dams, overhunting and pollution the Yangtze giant softshell turtle is down to three known individuals.
- But conservationists say if they can just locate a male and female, survival for the world’s biggest freshwater turtle is still possible.
- The plan would be to capture the animals and keep them in a semi-wild captive state, but more funding and resources are needed to move forward.

Sea turtles continue to swim in troubled waters: report
- TRAFFIC released new data about the prevalence of sea turtle trafficking in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
- The group says at least 2,354 turtles were seized in the three countries from January 2015 to July 2019.
- Tens of thousands of turtle eggs were also seized, mostly in Malaysia.

Amazon’s giant South American river turtle holding its own, but risks abound
- The arrau, or giant South American River turtle (Podocnemis expansa), inhabits the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. A recent six nation survey assessed the health of populations across the region in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
- The species numbered in the tens of millions in the 19th century. Much reduced today, P. expansa is doing fairly well in river systems with conservation programs (the Tapajós, Guaporés, Foz do Amazonas, and Purus) and not so well in others (the Javaés and Baixo Rio Branco, and the Trombetas, even though it has monitoring).
- The study registered more than 147,000 females protected or monitored by 89 conservation initiatives and programs between 2012 and 2014. Out of that total, two thirds were in Brazil (109,400), followed by Bolivia (30,000), Peru (4,100), Colombia (2,400), Venezuela (1,000) and Ecuador (6).
- The greatest historical threat to the arrau stems from eggs and meat being popular delicacies, which has led to trafficking. Hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining operations also put the animals at risk — this includes mining noise impairing turtle communication. Climate change could be the biggest threat in the 21st century.

For one Indonesian fisher, saving caught turtles is a moral challenge
- Sea turtles are protected species under Indonesian law, but continue to be caught and killed for food and ornaments in many parts of the country.
- Official wildlife conservation agencies are typically underfunded, and large-scale conservation programs run by NGOs are far from effective, a conservationist says.
- But in a fishing village on the island of Sulawesi, a lone fisherman is playing his part by buying live turtles accidentally caught by other fishers and usually injured, and caring for them until they heal and can be released back into the ocean.
- Conservationists have welcomed his initiative and intent, but raised questions about his expertise, with some of the more than 20 turtles he has cared for so far dying.

The Pan Borneo Highway brings wildlife threats to nat’l park doorstep
- The southern terminus of the Pan Borneo Highway in Malaysia extends to the edge of Tanjung Datu National Park in Sarawak.
- The highway’s proponents say the road is already bringing more tourists who are eager to see the park’s wildlife to the adjacent communities, helping to boost the local economy.
- But one of the world’s rarest primates, the Bornean banded langur, resides in the park, raising concerns in the conservation community that increased access could bring poachers into the park.

Some turtle embryos can influence their own sex, study finds
- The sex of some turtle species is influenced not by genes but by the temperatures they experience in the nests. Embryos of the Chinese pond turtle, however, can move inside the eggs toward cooler or hotter spots and influence their own sex, at least to some extent, a new study has found.
- This is good news because it means that, at least in theory, the turtles might be able to buffer some of the predicted shifts in the sex ratio because of climate change.
- But while the embryos seem to be influencing their sex under ideal conditions, researchers say that it may not be enough to counter the rapidly changing climate brought about by human activities.

Last known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle dies in China
- On April 13, the world’s only known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo following an attempt to artificially inseminate her, leaving behind just three confirmed individuals of the species.
- The female turtle had been moved more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Changsha Zoo to Suzhou Zoo in 2008 in the hope that she would mate and produce offspring with the 100-year old male turtle that also lived in captivity at Suzhou.
- The old turtle couple, however, failed to produce any offspring naturally, and several attempts at artificial insemination did not yield viable eggs.
- After the fifth attempt at artificial insemination, the female died during recovery from anesthesia. The male recovered from the procedure.

Nicaragua crisis takes an environmental toll with plunder of turtle eggs
- Residents of communities around Nicaragua’s La Flor Wildlife Refuge raided some 2,000 turtle nests and killed at least six turtles during the summer of 2018, a conservation NGO says.
- The scale of the theft was exacerbated by an ongoing political and security crisis that has left the refuge devoid of rangers and military patrols.
- The country’s first lady has launched an “I love turtles” media campaign, but critics are skeptical about how effective it will be.

Marine mammal and sea turtle populations benefitting from Endangered Species Act listing
- New research published in the journal PLoS ONE this month finds that the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) is effectively aiding in the recovery of beleaguered populations of marine mammals and sea turtles.
- Marine mammals and sea turtles comprise 62 of the 163 marine species that are currently afforded ESA protections. Researchers collected annual abundance estimates for populations of all 62 of those marine mammal and sea turtle species in order to analyze population trends and the magnitude of observed changes in population numbers.
- The research team hypothesized that populations that have been listed under the ESA for longer periods of time would be more likely to be recovering than those species listed recently, regardless of whether they were listed as “threatened” or the more severe “endangered,” and that’s exactly what they found.

Latam Eco Review: Resistance, hope and camera traps

Capybaras, Colombia. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay

The recent top stories from Mongabay Latam, our Spanish-language service, include a call to cover climate change, the dangers of opposing Colombia’s largest hydropower plant, and the most inspiring conservation news of 2018. ‘We are not doing enough’: 25 media groups commit to cover climate change “Journalists across the continent have a profound obligation to […]
Community-based conservation offers hope for Amazon’s giant South American turtle
- Rural communities began protecting the threatened giant South American turtle (Podocnemis expansa) along a 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) stretch of the remote Juruá River in Brazil’s Amazonas state back in 1977 – becoming the largest community-based conservation management initiative ever conducted in the Brazilian Amazon.
- A new study shows that these community stewards – who protect turtle nests and receive payment only in food baskets – have had incredible success not only in preserving endangered turtle species, but also in conserving riverine invertebrate and vertebrate species, including migratory birds, large catfish, caiman, river dolphins and manatees.
- Today, the Middle Juruá River community-protected beaches are “true islands of biodiversity, while other unprotected beaches are inhabited by few species. They are empty of life,” say study authors. On the protected beaches, turtle egg predation is a mere 2 percent. On unprotected beaches on the same river, predation rates are as high as 99 percent.
- The study also helps debunk a Brazilian and international policy that proposed the eviction of local traditional communities from newly instituted conservation units because they would be detrimental to conservation goals. Instead, researchers agree, traditional communities should be allowed to keep their homes and recruited as environmental stewards.

Every sea turtle in global study found to have synthetic fibers and microplastics in their guts
- A recent study found microplastics in the intestines of humans around the globe, and new research has now done the same for sea turtles.
- Researchers studied 102 sea turtles in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as well as the Mediterranean Sea. According to a paper published in the journal Global Change Biology earlier this month detailing their findings, synthetic particles less than 5 millimeters in length, including microplastics, were found in every single turtle studied.
- More than 800 synthetic particles were found in the 102 turtles included in the study, with the most common being fibers that are shed by things like clothing, car tires, cigarette filters, ropes, and fishing nets as they break down after finding their way into the sea.

The female park rangers protecting turtles from traffickers in Nicaragua
- The female park rangers in Nicaragua’s San Juan del Sur area patrol the beaches against the theft of eggs from endangered sea turtles that nest there.
- Species like the leatherback turtle have dwindled to less than 3 percent of their population in the eastern Pacific in the last three generations.
- In Nicaragua, an estimated more than 6,000 dozen turtle eggs are sold every month, with restaurants by the coast offering them in dishes as part of their menus.
- The NGO that hires the rangers say they manage to preserve 90 percent of turtle nests on the beaches they patrol, compared to 40 percent on government-patrolled beaches.

The true story of how 96 endangered sea turtle hatchlings survived a New York City beach
- It was a Thursday, so there probably wouldn’t have been too big of a crowd, but luckily there were at least a few beachgoers out at West Beach, near the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula, when a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle — a member of a critically endangered species — crawled on shore and started building a nest. Even more luckily, a couple of those beachgoers had the presence of mind to report it to a 24-hour marine wildlife rescue hotline.
- Those calls likely saved the lives of 96 sea turtle hatchlings, all of whom successfully made the trek back out to the ocean a couple months later.
- While human activities are the primary reason Kemp’s Ridleys face an uncertain future — harvesting of adults and eggs, destruction of their coastal nesting habitats, and entanglement in fishing gear are the chief threats to the species — in this case, human intervention was crucial to the turtles’ survival.

Audio: The true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtle hatchlings survived New York City
- On this episode, the true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtles survived a New York City beach — with a little help from some dedicated conservationists.
- This past summer, beachgoers in New York City spotted a nesting Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle on West Beach, which is on National Park Service land.
- Luckily, two of those beachgoers had the presence of mind to call the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation’s 24-hour hotline to report the nesting turtle — which very likely saved the lives of 96 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle hatchlings.

The Bangladeshi tribe that’s guarding turtles, co-authoring research papers
- A team of indigenous parabiologists in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, documenting their forest’s wildlife, have uncovered a surprisingly wide range of species.
- The parabiologists belong to the Mro ethnic group and work with the Creative Conservation Alliance co-founded by Shahriar Caesar Rahman and colleagues. They set up camera traps, monitor hunting and consumption of turtles and other wild animals in villages; act as protectors of hornbill nests; and serve as community leaders.
- The Mro parabiologists have become so crucial to the researchers’ work that they are regularly listed as formal co-authors of scientific papers.
- The Mro-CCA partnership has earned Rahman several laurels, including, most recently, the 2018 Whitley Award, dubbed the “green Oscars.”

Latam Eco Review: Hungry manatees and grand theft tortoise

The recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam, concerned hungry manatees in Venezuelan zoos; giant tortoises stolen from the Galápagos Islands; and a ban on free, prior and informed consent in Colombian extractive projects. Venezuelan zoos struggle to feed their animals Venezuela’s ongoing economic crisis is affecting the ability of researchers and zoo […]
Thousands of radiated tortoises seized from traffickers in Madagascar
- More than 7,000 critically endangered radiated tortoises were confiscated by authorities from suspected wildlife traffickers in Madagascar on Oct. 24.
- The seizure happened in the same area where a similar bust, involving nearly 10,000 tortoises of the same species, took place in April.
- The NGO Turtle Survival Alliance is working with the Madagascar environment ministry to care for the surviving tortoises.

As turtles go, so go their ecosystems
- Turtles are among the most threatened of the major groups of vertebrates in the world, a new review paper says, perhaps even more so than birds, mammals, fish or amphibians.
- Of the 356 species of turtles recognized today, about 61 percent are either threatened or have become extinct in modern times.
- Turtles contribute to the health of a variety of environments, including desert, wetland, freshwater and marine ecosystems, and losing these animals could have serious ecological consequences, researchers say.

How much plastic is too much plastic for sea turtles?
- Researchers in Australia examined the digestive tracts of 246 dead sea turtles collected from along the coast of the state of Queensland and counted up to 329 pieces of plastic.
- Younger turtles were found to have consumed considerably higher amounts of plastic pieces than adult turtles, the study found, possibly because they are less selective about what they eat. The young turtles also drift with ocean currents, just like plastic debris tends to do, and both might end up aggregating in the same places.
- The higher the number of plastic pieces a turtle has inside its gut, the higher the chance of it being killed by the plastic. For an average-sized turtle, ingesting more than 14 pieces of plastic translates into a 50 percent likelihood of death.

Latam Eco Review: Harlequin frogs, sustainable ranching, and miracle coral

These were the most read stories published by our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, last week: Scientists in Colombia strive to understand what is happening with the Athelopus frog genus in order to save them from extinction, while a cattle ranch in Bolivia opts for an ambitious sustainable tourism project, and more. Keep up to date with […]
The mystery of the sick turtles: Q&A with animal disease detectives Chrissy Cabay and Daniel Woodburn
- A puzzling shell disease is affecting western pond turtles, a species listed as vulnerable by the IUCN, in the state of Washington in the U.S.
- Researchers from Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium are investigating if disinfection practices that keep zoos clean could actually be removing good microbes that are beneficial for turtles, making them vulnerable to shell disease when they are released into the wild.
- Other experts, from the University of Illinois’s Zoological Pathology Program, are trying to understand what causes the disease and how it spreads. So far, they have discovered a new species of fungus that appears to be associated with the lesions that are characteristic of the shell disease.
- Mongabay spoke with Chrissy Cabay of Shedd Aquarium and Daniel B. Woodburn of the University of Illinois to find out more about their work.

Renowned wildlife conservationist Russell Mittermeier awarded 2018 Indianapolis Prize
- Mittermeier, a primatologist, herpetologist, and highly accomplished conservationist, is the seventh recipient of the prestigious prize, which has been awarded by the Indianapolis Zoological Society along with $250,000 in prize money every two years since 2006 to “the most successful animal conservationist in the world.”
- He spent 11 years at WWF–U.S. before becoming president of Conservation International (CI) in 1989. It was while he was at CI that Mittermeier first heard of the concept of “biodiversity hotspots” — a concept he would go on to popularize and utilize to achieve a number of conservation successes.
- “Russ Mittermeier is a consummate scientist, a visionary leader, a deft policy advocate and an inspiring mentor to many,” Michael Crowther, chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Zoological Society, said in a statement. “Perhaps most important, he is a consistent winner in the battles for species and ecosystem survival.”

Venezuela’s hungry hunt wildlife, zoo animals, as economic crisis grows
- Venezuela is suffering a disastrous economic crisis. With inflation expected to hit 13,000 percent in 2018, there has been a collapse of agricultural productivity, commercial transportation and other services, which has resulted in severe food shortages. As people starve, they are increasingly hunting wildlife, and sometimes zoo animals.
- Reports from the nation’s zoos say that animals are emaciated, with keepers sometimes forced to feed one form of wildlife to another, just to keep some animals alive. There have also been reports of mammals and birds being stolen from zoo collections. Zoos have reached out to Venezuelans, seeking donations to help feed their wild animals.
- The economic crisis makes scientific data gathering difficult, but a significant uptick in the harvesting of Guiana dolphin, known locally as tonina, has been observed. The dolphin is protected from commercial trade under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- The grisly remains of hunted pink flamingos have been found repeatedly on Lake Maracaibo. Also within the estuary, there has also been a rise in the harvesting of sea turtle species, including the vulnerable leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), and the critically endangered hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata).

‘Monumental’ bust in Madagascar triggers effort to save thousands of endangered tortoises
- Authorities discovered 9,888 starving and dehydrated radiated tortoises in a vacant house in southwestern Madagascar on April 10.
- Since then, a team of organizations led by the Turtle Survival Alliance has been working to provide care for the critically endangered tortoises, 574 of which died during the first week.
- The tortoises, endemic to Madagascar, have lost around 40 percent of their habitat to deforestation, and poachers commonly capture them for the pet trade in Asia and the United States.

Population of world’s rarest giant turtle rises to 4 with new discovery
- Some experts have now confirmed the presence of a Yangtze giant softshell turtle in Vietnam, increasing the total known population of the turtle to four individuals.
- Researchers matched environmental DNA collected from water samples from Xuan Khanh Lake in Vietnam to known samples from the species, and confirmed that the giant turtle living in the lake was most likely the Yangtze giant softshell turtle.
- Threats remain for the recently identified Yangtze giant softshell turtle. Xuan Khanh Lake is not protected, and commercial fishing is allowed there.

In Jakarta, wildlife monitors find a hotspot for the illegal tortoise trade
- Indonesia’s capital has seen an increase in the sale of non-native species of tortoises and freshwater turtles that are prohibited for international commercial trade, according to a report by the wildlife-monitoring group TRAFFIC.
- Growing demand for these species, coupled with Indonesia’s lax enforcement of customs regulation at international ports of entry and an outdated conservation act, have allowed the illicit international animal trade to grow, TRAFFIC said.
- The group has called on the Indonesian government to improve the country’s conservation laws and regulations, and urged more stringent monitoring of the markets, pet stores and expos in Jakarta and across the country to document and assess the extent of any illegal trade.

New report highlights top 50 tortoises and turtles on brink of extinction
- More than 50 percent of the world’s tortoises and turtles are threatened with extinction, according to a new report.
- The 2018 report presents an updated list of 50 species that are at immediate risk of extinction, selected on the basis of their “survival prospects and extinction risks.”
- Some 58 percent of the top 50 species are native to Asia, the report said, with most species coming from China, followed by Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Madagascar.

Conservationists rush to save Bolivian turtles threatened by egg trafficking
- The large-scale harvesting of the yellow-spotted Amazon river turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) for human consumption has contributed to the species’ decline, according to scientists. It is currently classified as vulnerable by the IUCN.
- A series of raids in mid-2017 saw authorities seize more than 50,000 river turtle eggs from poachers in the Beni department of Bolivia.
- A conservation project is trying to help river turtle populations recover, and has released 70,000 baby turtles into the Maniqui River since 1992.

Seychelles announces two new marine protected areas the size of Great Britain
- The government of Seychelles has announced the creation of two new marine protected areas covering 210,000 square kilometers, the size of the island of Great Britain.
- The first marine protected area includes 74,400 square kilometers of waters surrounding the extremely isolated Aldabra archipelago that is home to the world’s largest population of rare giant tortoises.
- The second marine protected area covers 136,000 square kilometers of a commercially important stretch of ocean between the Amirantes group of islands and Fortune Bank.
- The creation of the marine protected areas is part of a debt-for-nature deal that will allow the Seychelles to restructure its national debt in exchange for protecting 30 percent of its exclusive economic zone.

Indonesian police bust Chinese nationals with 200 kg of turtle shells
- Police in eastern Indonesia have arrested two Chinese men for illegally being in possession of 200 kilos (440 pounds) of turtle shells, which they believe was headed to China.
- All turtle species are protected under Indonesian law, and the possession or trade in their parts is punishable by up to five years in prison and $7,000 in fines. The estimated value of the seized shells was $13,200.
- The bust highlights the continued role of the city of Makassar as the main gateway for traffickers moving wildlife products out of the biodiversity haven of Papua, where the suspects say they obtained the turtle shells.

As 2017 hurricane season ends, scientists assess tropical forest harm
- This year’s Atlantic hurricane season – one for the record books – ended on 30 November, seeing six Category 3 to 5 storms wreaking massive destruction across the Caribbean, in the U.S. and Mexico. While damage to the built environment is fairly easy to assess, harm to conserved areas and species is more difficult to determine.
- Satellite images show extensive damage to the 28,400-acre El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, the United States’ only national tropical rainforest. However, observers on the ground say the forest is showing signs of a quick recovery.
- More serious is harm to already stressed, endangered species with small populations. El Yunque’s Critically Endangered Puerto Rican parrot was hard hit: out of 50 endemic wild parrots, 16 are known dead. Likewise, the Endangered imperial parrot endemic to Dominica, spotted just three times since Hurricane Maria.
- Ecosystems and species need time to recover between storms. If the intensity of hurricanes continues to increase due to escalating global warming as predicted, tropical ecosystem and species resilience may be seriously tested.

Study maps out reptiles’ ranges, completing the ‘atlas of life’
- The study’s 39 authors, from 30 institutions around the world, pulled together data on the habitats of more than 10,000 species of reptiles.
- They found little overlap with current conservation areas, many of which have used the numbers of mammal and bird species present as proxies for overall biodiversity.
- In particular, lizards and turtles aren’t afforded much protection under current schemes.
- The authors report that they’ve identified high-priority areas for conservation that protects reptile diversity, ranging from deserts in the Middle East, Africa and Australia, to grass- and scrublands in Asia and Brazil.

Booming legal Amazon wildlife trade documented in new report
- Wildlife trade attention has recently focused on Africa. But a new report spotlights the brisk legal international trade in plants and animals from eight Amazon nations. The report did not look at the illegal trade, whose scope is largely unknown.
- The US$128 million industry exports 14 million animals and plants annually, plus one million kilograms by weight, including caiman and peccary skins for the fashion industry, live turtles and parrots for the pet trade, and arapaima for the food industry.
- The report authors note that such trade, conducted properly, can have benefits for national economies, for livelihoods, and even for wildlife — animals bred in captivity, for example, can provide scientists with vital data for sustaining wild populations.
- The report strongly emphasizes the need for monitoring, regulating and enforcing sustainable harvest levels of wild animals and plants if the legal trade is to continue to thrive, and if Amazonian forests and rivers are not to be emptied of their wildlife.

Rehabilitating wildlife in the aftermath of Harvey
- When the team at Bat World Sanctuary in Weatherford, Texas, a town about 30 miles west of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, heard about what was happening to bats as Hurricane Harvey battered Houston, they knew immediately that they had to help.
- It wasn’t just bats that needed saving, of course: Wildlife rehabilitators rescued numerous species after the storm, from common animals like beavers, deer, opossums, owls, and raccoons to rarer wildlife like alligator snapping turtles and magnificent frigatebirds.
- Many of the animals were treated in the field and released, but those that needed more extensive medical attention were taken to wildlife rehab facilities across the state of Texas.

Field Notes: Pond turtle studies could help sea turtles survive toxic algal blooms
- Harmful algal blooms (HABs), dubbed “red tides,” occur worldwide. When ingested, tiny, toxin-producing algae threaten marine and human life. These events — sometimes natural, but often human-induced — now happen annually on the U.S. Gulf Coast and kill endangered turtle species.
- Physiologist Sarah Milton, at Florida Atlantic University, researches the effect of HABs on freshwater turtles to improve treatment for endangered sea turtles that are rescued from toxin-filled waters.
- Milton found that pond turtles tolerate far more algal toxin than similar sized mammals can survive — resistance possibly rooted in their ability to dive, living without oxygen for months. Understanding this ability could help sickened sea turtles rescued during harmful algal outbreaks.
- Understanding the cellular mechanisms that allow pond turtles to maintain brain and body function during anoxic conditions could also help scientists improve outcomes for people who have suffered oxygen-deprivation events, such as stroke, which trigger irreversible brain cell death.

Gabon pledges ‘massive’ protected network for oceans
- The network of marine protected areas covers some 53,000 square kilometers (20,463 square miles) of ocean, an area larger than Costa Rica.
- The marine parks and reserves could also draw tourists eager to catch a glimpse of the humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) and leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) that all shuttle through Gabonese waters.
- Government officials are in the process of overhauling how they manage fisheries, and they hope the move to protect Gabon’s territorial waters will improve the country’s food security and give its citizens a better chance to earn a living from fishing.

Protected species in Gulf of Mexico could take decades to recover from Deepwater Horizon oil spill
- The Deepwater Horizon oil spill killed thousands of marine mammals and sea turtles in the Gulf, according to findings detailed in a special issue of the journal Endangered Species Research, published in January, comprised of 20 studies that collectively represent more than five years’-worth of data collection and analysis by scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their partners.
- The research was performed as part of a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA), a process required under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 in which NOAA investigates the types of injuries to wildlife caused by an oil spill, determines the number of animals that were harmed, and develops a restoration plan designed to address the primary threats to impacted species.
- In a statement, NOAA offered this succinct summation of the results of the studies: “The research indicates that populations of several marine mammal and sea turtle species will take decades to rebound. Significant habitat restoration in the region will also be needed.”

Balinese rituals fuel spike in trafficking of endangered sea turtles
- Indonesia is home to six of the world’s seven sea turtle species. International rules prevent any of them from being traded internationally, and the domestic trade is heavily controlled.
- After Bali’s high priests issued a strict regulation in 2005 on the use of turtles in ceremonies, consumption of their meat dropped dramatically.
- But a recent series of busts seem to indicate a significant surge in turtle smuggling to the island.
- For now, Indonesian authorities’ main strategy appears to be education.

Watch a leatherback sea turtle return to the ocean after nesting on a Costa Rica beach
- While leatherback sea turtles typically do their nesting at night, a prospective mother turtle is sometimes up so late laying her eggs that she is still on the beach at sunrise.
- It’s a rare sight, but those who are lucky enough to witness it get to watch the endangered turtle slowly make her way back to the ocean before gliding off into the open water.
- Jenell Black, field manager for US- and Costa Rica-based NGO The Leatherback Trust, was conducting a morning survey on Playa Grande, the largest beach in Las Baulas National Park on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, when she was fortunate enough to observe just such a sight. And fortunately for the rest of us, she had a drone with her at the time.

Sand mining ban lifted on beach in Suriname, causing public backlash
- Sand mining could decrease the ability of Braamspunt beach to protect Suriname’s capital city from rising sea levels and storms surges.
- Conservationists also fear for sea turtles nesting on the beach, which may be disturbed by the bright lights and loud noises of the industrial activity.
- Sand mining in coastal environments has become a global industry, threatening biodiversity and natural defenses against climate change.

Law enforcers recover 38 sea turtles in eastern Indonesia — 6 of them dead
- The police arrested five fishermen in the bust.
- Indonesia is home to six of the seven species of marine turtle.
- The creatures’ numbers have fallen sharply in recent years.

Saving Jamaica Bay’s diamondback terrapins
- The Diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) is a turtle species native to coastal tidal marshes in the eastern and southern United States.
- Its population in New York City’s Jamaica Bay has declined by more than half in the last decade – to an estimated 10,000 turtles today.
- The underlying causes for this decline are a mystery, but researchers are now engaged in a multi-year study to identify them. As the terrapin plays a crucial role in the ecosystem’s health and resiliency, their findings have important implications for Jamaica Bay.

Field Notes: Predicting how the pet trade spreads infectious disease
- The exotic animal trade is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the US is the world’s leading importer. While the US government is on the alert for well known animal-transmitted diseases, there is no mandatory health surveillance for most animals coming though US ports for commercial distribution.
- Live animal imports could bring new diseases into the US and infect endemic wildlife, with devastating consequences as, for example, was seen with the worldwide exposure of amphibians to Chytrid fungus which resulted in the decline of more than 200 species.
- Elizabeth Daut is drawing on her training as a veterinarian and her extensive experience with wildlife to create a computer model that evaluates the risk of importing infectious diseases to the US via the exotic animal trade.
- Predictions produced by her model could help prioritize which species and exporting countries might warrant extra attention at ports of entry. With a better understanding of disease risks, government agencies could improve surveillance and develop better infectious disease prevention plans.

Efforts to conserve sea turtles disrupted by coal plant in East Java
- Fuel for the Pacitan coal-fired power plant is brought by sea-going barges, which pass through turtle breeding areas.
- Conservation areas near the power plant provide nesting sites for green, hawksbill and olive ridley sea turtles. Local conservationists say the presence of coal barges — and several spills — reduces the number of hatchlings.
- Villagers say the river near the power plant is now empty of the fish and shrimp that once formed a regular part of the local diet.
- This article is the second in a series on Pacitan originally posted on Mongabay’s Indonesian-language site.

‘Too rare to wear’: new campaign targets tourists to end Hawksbill turtle trade
- The Hawksbill turtle’s striking shell is carved into jewelry, combs and other trinkets, which is then sold in markets across Latin America and the Caribbean.
- The campaign, Too Rare to Wear, will help people learn about turtleshell souvenirs and how to avoid buying them while traveling in those regions.
- The campaign includes a coalition of conservation organizations, tour operators, and media partners.

All I want for Christmas… a wildlife researcher’s holiday wish list
- They are some of the world’s most unique, beautiful (though sometimes, really ugly), little known, but always seriously threatened species. They’re among the many Almost Famous Asian Animals conservationists are trying to save, and which Mongabay has featured in 2016.
- The examples included here are Asia’s urbane fishing cat, Vietnam’s heavily trafficked pangolin, Central Asia’s at risk wild yaks and saiga, and Indonesia’s Painted terrapin. All of these, and many more, could benefit from a holiday financial boost.
- Mostly these creatures need the same things: research and breeding facilities; educational workshops; and really cool, high tech, high ticket, radio collars and tracking devices. These items come with price tags ranging from a few hundred bucks, to thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars.

Land reclamation in Malaysia puts environment, endangered turtle at risk
- With technology bringing construction costs down, land reclamation projects are increasingly attractive to real estate developers and investors in Malaysia.
- Turtle landings at nesting sites near land reclamation projects have plummeted. Traditional fishing communities also fear for their way of life.
- Environmental activists and coastal communities call for more detailed environmental impact assessments.

Top scientists: Amazon’s Tapajós Dam Complex “a crisis in the making”
- BRAZIL’S GRAND PLAN: Build 40+ dams, new roads and railways at the heart of the Amazon to transport soy from the interior to the coast and foreign markets, turning the Tapajós Basin and its river systems into an industrial waterway, leading to unprecedented deforestation, top researchers say.
- ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS: “The effects would clearly be devastating for the ecology and connectivity of the greater Tapajós Basin,” says William Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia; a leading rainforest ecology scientist. “It is not overstating matters to term this a crisis in the making.”
- HUMAN IMPACTS: The dams would produce “A human rights crisis, driven by the flooding of indigenous territories and forced relocation of indigenous villages… [plus] the loss of fisheries, reduced fertility of fertile floodplains, and polluting of clean water sources,” says Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier.
- CLIMATE IMPACTS: “The worst-case scenario… over 200,000 square kilometers of deforestation,” says climatologist Carlos Nobre, which would be “very serious” and create “regional climate change.” Tapajós deforestation could even help tip the global scales, as the Amazon ceases being a carbon sink, and becomes a carbon source — with grave consequences for the planet.

Pulling the stunningly unique painted terrapin back from the brink
- The Critically Endangered painted terrapin (Batagur borneoensis) is one of the 25 most endangered tortoises and freshwater turtles on earth, according to the Turtle Survival Coalition — with surviving numbers in Indonesia and Malaysia unknown.
- The species is under tremendous pressure from poaching for eggs and by agroindustry which is degrading and converting its river and ocean beach and mangrove habitat for fish and shrimp aquaculture and oil palm production.
- Joko Guntoro and the Satucita Foundation — with help from the UK’s Chester Zoo, the Houston Zoo in Texas, and the Turtle Survival Alliance — have built a head starting facility in Indonesia and successfully incubated more than six hundred hatchlings which are scheduled for release this autumn.
- A mysterious species, scientists know next to nothing about painted terrapin migration, juvenile and adult behaviors — key to conservation. Unfortunately, under-funded researchers lack the money for satellite tracking of the species.

Fish kills at Amazon’s Belo Monte dam point up builder’s failures
- In April, the Norte Energia consortium — builder of the now operational Belo Monte dam — was fined US$10.8 million for the death of 16.2 million tons of fish. Another flurry of fish deaths has occurred since then, and fishermen fear more to come.
- Critics say the dam’s construction has had negative impacts on the Tabuleiro do Embaubal, one of the most important turtle breeding sites in the Amazon basin; 20,000 Giant Amazon River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa) lay their eggs there annually.
- The dam’s builder and scientists agree Belo Monte will drastically curtail the annual floods that force the Xingu River over its banks and into the rainforests, harming aquatic connectivity and likely impacting genetic diversity and ecosystem health. Extreme drought due to climate change adds to that risk.
- Indigenous and traditional fisheries suffered steep declines during the building of the dam, with fishermen and scientists noting the disappearance of important commercial fish species such as the piraíba. Those losses could continue in future.

Amazon turtles imperilled by dams, mercury pollution and illegal trade
- The Brazilian Amazon is home to 17 turtle species, all of which are under pressure from overexploitation, the illegal wildlife trade, widespread hydropower dam construction, and mercury contamination. Deforestation, agricultural development and climate change are other looming threats.
- The Brazilian government’s Amazon Turtle Program focuses its conservation efforts on the Giant Amazon River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa), plus the Yellow-spotted River Turtle (P. unifilis), and Six-tuberculed River Turtle (P. sextuberculata). The Wildlife Conservation Society works with these same species and is also conserving the Red-headed Amazon River Turtle (P. erythrocephala), and Big-headed Amazon River Turtle (Peltocephalus dumerilianus).
- Amazon dams — especially mega-dams like the just built Belo Monte dam and the proposed Luiz do Tapajós dam — alter ecosystems and disrupt the annual flood cycles that inundate lowland Amazon forests, putting turtles and other species at risk.
- Mercury contamination of Amazon rivers due to illegal gold mining is a major threat to turtles. Researchers say there is an urgent need for the Brazilian government to develop and implement guidelines for the assessment of mercury toxicity in Amazon reptiles, especially turtles.

Pre-Columbian Amazon settlement primarily ate fish — more sustainable?
- A study of the Central Amazon’s Hatahara settlement found that, circa 750-1230 AD, 76 percent of the animals people ate were fish and just 4 percent were mammal — very different from American / European prehistoric groups who ate more meat than fish.
- Thirty-seven different fish taxa were identified in the Hatahara samples, indicating that the people of that time were exploiting a much more diverse spectrum of food species than today, perhaps making their fishing and dietary habits more sustainable.
- One mystery: just one river turtle genus (Podocnemis) dominated the reptile diet, even though a diversity of turtle taxa can be found in the region.
- While these results are intriguing, more study is needed at more locations (inland, interfluvial and wetland settlements) to arrive at a regional understanding of available animal resources and the diets of Pre-Columbian Amazon settlements over time.

Unknown, ignored and disappearing: Asia’s Almost Famous Animals
- Asia is home to a vast array of primates and other mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish — all fascinating, all uniquely adapted to their habitats. Many are seriously threatened, but little known by the public.
- One conservation argument says that protecting charismatic species like tigers, rhinos and orangutans and their habitat will also protect lesser known species such as pangolins, langurs and the Malayan tapir. But this is a flawed safety net through which many little known species may fall into oblivion.
- Over the next six months, Mongabay will introduce readers to 20 Almost Famous Asian Animals — a handful of Asia’s little known fauna — in the hope that familiarity will help generate concern and action.
- In this first overview article, we rely as much on pictures as on words to profile some of Asia’s most beautiful, ugly, strange, magnificent and little known animals.

From Soup to Superstar: the story of sea turtle conservation along the Indian coast – book review
- Kartik Shanker is on the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
- In his new book, From Soup to Superstar, Shanker lifts the veil of some of the mystery shrouding the lives of sea turtles, and the course of sea turtle conservation in India.
- The chapters are deeply researched, reflecting Shanker’s decades-long experience working with sea turtles and sea turtle conservationists.

Turtle smuggler sentenced to 5 years in prison
- In 2014, Canadian border guards arrested Kai Xu, a Canadian man, for attempting to smuggle 51 live turtles in his trousers.
- On April 12, 2016, a U.S. federal judge sentenced Xu to 57 months in prison for trying to smuggle turtles to China.
- Xu, 27, admitted that he had tried to smuggle more than 1,600 turtles of various species – including species like the Eastern box turtles, Red-eared sliders, and Diamondback Terrapins – out of the United States to China between April 2014 and September 2014.

Fishing nets kill ‘high proportion’ of adult loggerhead turtles in the Mediterranean
- Researchers tracked 27 female loggerhead turtles using satellite devices over a ten-year period from 2001 to 2012.
- The year-long survey revealed, for the first time, that the turtles were using multiple nesting sites hundreds of kilometres apart, researchers say.
- Three of the 27 turtles died within the first year of being followed due to entanglement in fishing nets, suggesting an annual mortality rate of 11 percent, which the team says is “alarmingly high”.

Critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are in even more trouble than scientists thought
- Bilateral conservation efforts between the U.S. and Mexico led to an exponential recovery rate of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles in 2009 that were expected to continue for decades.
- In 2010, marine biologists noticed that nesting levels had plunged sharply; approximately 14,000 nests were laid in the 2015 season, a 34 percent decline over 2009.
- New research suggests that the species’ recovery has stalled at less than one-tenth of historic levels.

Photos: ‘Extremely rare’ baby albino turtle spotted in Australia
- On Sunday, volunteers from the Coolum and North Shore Coast Care group spotted Alby, an albino green turtle hatchling, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
- The volunteers measured Alby, took his photos, and let him walk into the ocean and swim away.
- Such albino hatchlings are extremely rare, scientists say, probably occurring at the rate of one in many hundreds of thousands of eggs that are laid.

Chinese turtle heist sends rare Philippine species to brink of extinction, international rescue underway

A traumatized turtle on its way to rehab. Photo credit: Dr. Sabine Schoppe, Katala Foundation. On Friday, June 19, Philippine authorities raided a warehouse on the island of Palawan and confiscated more than 4,000 live, illegally harvested rare turtles, only days before they were to be shipped to foreign food and pet markets. “It appears […]
Photos: new zoo exhibit dramatically displays real threat to Asian turtle

The new Annam leaf turtle exhibit at the London Zoo. Photo by: Ben Tapley/ZSL. Usually animal pens in zoos are designed to resemble a species’ native habitat: lions in sprawling savanna, pandas in bamboo forests, and crocodiles in mangroves. But a new pen at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL)’s London Zoo is meant to […]
Locals lead scientists to new population of near-extinct reptile

Lazarus turtle: Scientists discover unknown population of Critically Endangered reptile A rare photo of a living Arakan forest turtle. Photo courtesy of Shahriar Caesar Rahman. By the early Twentieth Century, the world had pretty much given up on the Arakan forest turtle (Heosemys depressa), named after the hills where it was found in 1875 in […]
With local help, hawksbill sea turtles make a comeback in Nicaragua

A hawksbill sea turtle hatchling heads towards the sea. This year over 35,000 hatchlings were born in the Pearl Cays: Photo credit: WCS. Hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricate), a reptile listed as the highest threat level by the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, are making a momentous local comeback in Nicaragua’s Pearl Cays. This […]
Suspects acquitted in shocking murder of sea turtle conservationist

Environmentalist Jairo Mora Sandoval on the beach with fellow WIDECAST volunteers. Photo by: Christine Figgener/Creative Commons 3.0. Yesterday, the seven men accused of brutally murdering Jairo Mora Sandoval on a beach in Costa Rica two years ago were acquitted of the crime. Mora’s murder shocked the Central American country—long known for the progressive protection of […]
The threat of traditional medicine: China’s boom may mean doom for turtles

Growing population and traditional mindset fueling demand for wild turtles, driving some species towards extinction For thousands of years turtles have been used in Chinese traditional medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments and diseases. Originally published in the journal Radiata and recently republished HerpDigest David S. Lee and Liao Shi Kun write, “[In […]
No longer ‘deaf as a stump’: researchers find turtles chirp, click, meow, cluck

Turtles communicate to synchronize hatching, socialize Turtles comprise one of the oldest living groups of reptiles, with hundreds of species found throughout the world. Many have been well-researched, and scientists know very specific things about their various evolutionary histories, metabolic rates, and the ways in which their sexes are determined. But there was one very […]
‘Hope springs eternal’: the anniversary of the death of Lonesome George

Conservation efforts succeed with Galapagos tortoise, half of all turtle species worldwide remain threatened Today marks the two-year anniversary of the death of Lonesome George, the world’s last Pinta Island tortoise. The occasion calls attention to the declines of many turtle and tortoise species, which together form one of the most swiftly disappearing groups of […]
Survey finds huge biological value in Baja California, stalls resort development

Against an endless blue sky, the blazing sun beat relentlessly onto the sands, throwing off a blinding white glare. Pausing for a moment in the generous shade of a cliff, Benjamin Wilder, Sula Vanderplank, and their team of scientists took in the immense beauty of the landscape unfolding before them. Each set of eyes was […]
Chinese poachers caught with 555 marine turtles, most dead (PHOTOS)

Dead sea turtles confiscated by the Philippine National Police (PNP). Photo by: PNP-SBU/PIA. On Friday, eleven Chinese fishermen were caught by Filipino police with 555 marine turtles, 378 of which were dead. Officials in the Philippines have since released the 177 living turtles. But the incident has sparked an international standoff between the Philippines and […]
Fish-terrorizing, prehistoric-looking turtle actually three species

An alligator snapping turtle. Photo by: Garry Tucker/USFWS. So, you’re a fish swimming in a river in Louisiana. Hungry, you see a little worm wiggling out from the river bed. You swoop in for the ambush only to have that little worm turn into the gaping maw of some prehistoric-looking monster out of fishy nightmares. […]
Chelonians for dinner: hunting threatens at-risk turtles and tortoises in India

WARNING: This article contains a graphic photo. —————— The extinction risk faced by mammals is often in the limelight. But it may be surprising to learn that next only to primates, chelonians—or turtles and tortoises—are the world’s most imperiled vertebrate group. “It is important to conserve chelonians as they are such a distinct group among […]
Photos: mass turtle hatching produces over 200,000 babies

Biologists recently documented one of nature’s least-known, big events. On the banks of the Purus River in the Brazilian Amazon, researchers witnessed the mass-hatching of an estimated 210,000 giant South American river turtles (Podocnemis expansa). The giant South American river turtle, or Arrau, is the world’s largest side-necked turtle and can grow up to 80 […]
The smoothtooth blacktip shark and four other species rediscovered in markets

Scientific American magazine recently ran an article on the rediscovery of the smoothtooth blacktip shark (Carcharhinus leiodon) in a Kuwaiti fish market. Believed extinct for over 100 years, the smoothtooth had not been seen since the naturalist Wilhelm Hein returned from a trip to Yemen in 1902. With its reappearance, scientists scoured Kuwaiti markets and […]
Over 350 species added to the IUCN Red List’s threatened categories in the last six months

The number of threatened species on the IUCN Red List has grown by 352 since this summer, according to an update released today. Currently, 21,286 species are now listed as threatened with extinction out of the 71,576 that have been evaluated. The new update comes with both good and bad news for a number of […]
Leatherback sea turtle no longer Critically Endangered

The leatherback sea turtle—the world’s largest turtle and the only member of the genus Dermochelys—received good news today. In an update of the IUCN Red List, the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) has been moved from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable. However, conservationists warn that the species still remains hugely endangered—and in rapid decline—in many parts […]
Eighty sea turtles wash up dead on the coast of Guatemala

An assortment of marine animals and birds reside along the black volcanic sand beaches of Guatemala’s Pacific coast, but lately both residents and visitors on the southeast beaches of the country have observed a tragic event – the stranding of dead sea turtles. Eighty dead sea turtles have been recorded since the first week of […]
Costa Rican environmentalist pays ultimate price for his dedication to sea turtles

Jairo Mora Sandoval walking on the beach where he died after releasing over a hundred turtle hatchlings in 2012. Photo by: Carlyn Samuel. On the evening of May 30th, 26-year-old Jairo Mora Sandoval was murdered on Moin beach near Limón, Costa Rica, the very stretch of sand where he courageously monitored sea turtle nests for […]
Five percent of ploughshare tortoise population perishes after botched smuggling attempt

In March, two people were caught attempting to smuggle 54 ploughshare tortoises (Astrochelys yniphora) into Thailand. Listed as Critically Endangered, the tortoises’ wild population is down to approximately 400-500 animals in its native Madagascar, meaning the smugglers were attempting to move over 10 percent of the total population. Now, the Scientific American blog Extinction Countdown […]
Scientists discover that marine animals disperse seagrass

Lesser known than coral reefs, marine seagrass ecosystems are rich in biodiversity and are powerhouses when it comes to sequestering carbon dioxide. Yet, much remains unknown about the ecology of seagrass beds, including detailed information on how seagrass spread their seeds and colonize new area. Now a recent study in Marine Ecology Progress Series documents […]
How many animals do we need to keep extinction at bay?

How many animal individuals are needed to ensure a species isn’t doomed to extinction even with our best conservation efforts? While no one knows exactly, scientists have created complex models to attempt an answer. They call this important threshold the “minimum viable population” and have spilled plenty of ink trying to decipher estimates, many of […]
Over ten percent of a species’ total population found in smuggler’s bag

Ploughshare and radiated tortoises confiscated in Bangkok. Photo by: P.Tansom/TRAFFIC. On Friday, March 15th Thai authorities arrested a 38-year-old man attempting to collect a bag containing 54 ploughshare tortoises (Astrochelys yniphora) and 21 radiated tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) in Suvarnabhumi International Airport. Found only in Madagascar both species are listed as Critically Endangered and protected under […]
Turtles win greater protection at CITES meeting

Dozens of freshwater turtle and tortoise species won greater protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), reports the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Several U.S.-led proposals to restrict trade in 44 Asian turtle and tortoise species and three North American pond turtle species were today adopted […]
Leatherback sea turtles suffer 78 percent decline at critical nesting sites in Pacific

Leatherback sea turtle laying eggs on the coast of Suriname. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. The world’s largest sea turtle, the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), is vanishing from its most important nesting sites in the western Pacific, according to a new study in Ecosphere. Scientists found that leatherback turtle nests have dropped by 78 percent in less […]
Endangered turtle urinates through its mouth

Chinese soft-shelled turtle in captivity. Photo by: Bastet78. One of China’s most commonly farmed turtles for consumption, the Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis), has a unique ability: it urinates out of its mouth. Researchers in Singapore, writing in The Journal of Experimental Biology, have discovered that the Chinese soft-shelled turtle excretes most of its urine […]
Turtle knowledge in Africa shows significant gaps

Sometimes turtles fall through the cracks: a new study in the open access journal Tropical Conservation Science, has uncovered a number of ‘gap species’ in the turtle families inhabiting Africa. ‘Gap species’ are those that are recorded in one country or another, but not in adjacent countries which could be due to a lack of […]
Lonesome George passes, taking unique subspecies with him

Lonesome George, the last of his kind, has passed away. Lonesome George, the sole surviving member of the Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni), was found dead on Sunday by staff at the Galapagos National Park. With George’s passing, the Pinta Island tortoise subspecies officially falls into extinction. First found in 1972, Lonesome George became […]
Conservationists successfully hatch world’s fourth most endangered turtle

The world’s fourth most endangered turtle has received a happy boost from breeding efforts, reports the AFP. Bangladeshi scientists have successfully hatched 25 northern river terrapins (Batagur baska) using an artificial beach constructed in the country’s Bhawal National Park. Scientists captured 19 wild turtles (five females and fourteen males) as an insurance population against extinction, […]
Hail Mary effort aims to save the world’s most endangered turtles

Roti snake island turtle, which is number 12 of the world’s most endangered turtles, are being captive bred at the WCS’s Bronx Zoo. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has pledged to work with all of its institutions to save at least half of the world’s most 25 endangered turtles as […]
Featured video: the world’s greatest turtle collection
At a seemingly small residence in Florida, lives the world’s greatest turtle collection. The Chelonian Research Institute contains a specimen of nearly every species of turtle found worldwide and many live species. Founded and headed by Dr. Peter Pritchard, the institute is both a research center and an active museum. Pritchard has spent his career […]
Picture of the day: nearly-extinct turtle released into the wild in Cambodia

Children watch the rereleasing of a southern river terrapin back into the wild. Photo by: Eleanor Briggs. Only around 200 southern river terrapins (Batagur affinis) survive in the wild, but today at least the species got some good news. A female terrapin was released back into the Sre Ambel River with much fanfare after being […]

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