(CN) China's Turtles, Emblems of a Crisis

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Published Wednesday, December 5, 2007

China's Turtles, Emblems of a Crisis

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/world/asia/05turtle.html

 

Visitors to the Changsha Zoo in China's southern Hunan Province observe the

endangered Yangtze soft-shell turtle.

Du Bin for The New York Times

 

 

CHANGSHA, China - Unnoticed and unappreciated for five decades, a large

female turtle with a stained, leathery shell is now a precious commodity

in this city's decaying zoo. She is fed a special diet of raw meat. Her

small pool has been encased with bulletproof glass. A surveillance

camera monitors her movements. A guard is posted at night.

 

 

The agenda is simple: The turtle must not die.

 

 

Earlier this year, scientists concluded that she was the planet's last

known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle. She is about 80 years old

and weighs almost 90 pounds.

 

 

As it happens, the planet also has only one undisputed, known male. He

lives at a zoo in the city of Suzhou. He is 100 years old and weighs

about 200 pounds. They are the last hope of saving a species believed to

be the largest freshwater turtles in the world.

 

 

" It's a very dire situation, " said Peter Pritchard, a prominent turtle

expert in the United States who has helped in trying to save the

species. " This one is so big and it has such an aura of mystery. "

 

 

For many Chinese, turtles symbolize health and longevity, but the saga

of the last two Yangtze giant soft-shells is more symbolic of the

threatened state of wildlife and biodiversity in China. Pollution,

hunting and rampant development are destroying natural habitats, and

also endangering plant and animal populations.

 

 

China contains some of the world's richest troves of biodiversity, yet

the latest major survey of plants and animals reveals a bleak picture

that has grown bleaker during the past decade. Nearly 40 percent of all

mammal species in China are now endangered, scientists say. For plants,

the situation is worse; 70 percent of all nonflowering plant species and

86 percent of flowering species are considered threatened.

 

 

An overriding problem is the fierce competition for land and water.

China's goal of quadrupling its economy by 2020 means that industry,

growing cities and farmers are jostling for a limited supply of usable land.

 

 

 

Cities or factories often claim farmland for expansion; farmers, in

turn, reclaim marginal land that could be habitat. Already, China has

lost half of its wetlands, according to one survey.

 

 

For the Chinese scientists and conservationists trying to reverse these

trends, the challenge begins with trying to convince the government that

protecting wildlife is an important priority. For centuries, Chinese

leaders emphasized dominance over nature rather than coexistence with

it. Animals and plants are still often regarded as commodities valued

for use as medicine or food, rather than as essential pieces of a

natural order.

 

 

" The whole idea of ecology and ecosystems is a new thing in the

culture, " said Lu Zhi, a professor of conservation biology at Peking

University.

 

 

Scientists say China's status as a leading center of biodiversity makes

the threatened state of wildlife a global concern. Many of China's

species are concentrated in the mountainous southwestern region -

sometimes popularized in the West as Shangri-La - as well as in Tibet,

Hainan Island and along the North Korean border. Endangered indigenous

animals include the giant panda, several varieties of pheasants and

monkeys, and a range of small mammals including shrews and rodents.

 

 

" China is one of a small handful of countries, maybe a dozen, that has

remarkably high numbers of species, and a remarkably high number of

species that are not found anywhere else, " said Jeffrey A. McNeely,

chief scientist for the World Conservation Union.

 

 

Nearly every major international conservation group has established a

China office to promote different wildlife protection initiatives. The

group WildAid has sponsored a public education campaign featuring

billboards with the Chinese basketball star Yao Ming. " Endangered

species are our friends, " Mr. Yao said at a news conference last year in

Beijing.

 

 

China has a large system of nature reserves, mostly in the country's

more remote western regions, though financing levels are far below those

even in other developing countries. No Chinese protection program is

considered more successful than the robust effort to save the panda.

Roughly 2,000 pandas now live in panda reserves. Other captive breeding

programs have helped pull the Chinese alligator and the Tibetan antelope

away from the brink of extinction.

 

 

But these successes, which involve animals of symbolic national

importance, are modest compared with the number of species that are

neglected and edging closer to extinction. Last year, the Yangtze River

dolphin, a freshwater mammal known as the baiji, was declared extinct.

 

 

" So many species are neglected, " said Dr. Lu, who also heads the China

affiliate of Conservation International. " Look at the baiji. The

extinction was announced and what has been done? Nothing. People felt pity. "

 

 

 

Then, alluding to the Yangtze giant soft-shell, also known as the

Rafetus swinhoei, she added:

 

 

" This turtle will be next. "

 

 

Surviving History's Tides

 

 

Fifty-one years ago, a traveling circus performed at the new zoo in

Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in southern China. For a cash

payment, the circus left behind a large female turtle. Zookeepers

slipped the turtle into a large pond, where for a half-century it

hibernated in winters and poked its pig-like snout above the water's

surface every spring. The walls of the zoo became the equivalent of a

time capsule.

 

 

Outside, the convulsions of modern Chinese history were scarring an

already damaged landscape. Under Mao, national campaigns were waged to

kill birds and other animals perceived as pests. Widespread famines in

the late 1950s and early 1960s drove desperate people to hunt or gather

anything deemed edible, even tree bark.

 

 

Since the 1980s, the pressure has come from the rapid push for economic

development. In recent years, turtle experts identified the Yangtze

giant soft-shell as dangerously close to extinction. Inside the Changsha

Zoo, zookeepers had no idea that experts were scouring China for the

species. In fact, they knew very little about their female turtle. " We

just treated it like a normal animal, " said Yan Xiahui, deputy director

of the zoo.

 

 

The species was first identified as distinct in the 1870s. A British

diplomat in Shanghai sent a specimen to the British Museum, where it was

beheaded and pickled in a jar. Some experts debated whether it was part

of another species, and for years it received little attention.

 

 

" It proceeded to be ignored by the world as if it didn't exist for

roughly 100 years, " said Dr. Pritchard, the American expert, who has

seen the specimen in the British Museum.

 

 

With its wide, flat shape and leathery dorsal shell, the giant Yangtze

males can weigh more than 220 pounds; females are usually smaller. By

the 1990s, a prominent Chinese herpetologist, Zhao Kentang, had realized

the significance of the turtle and tried in vain to persuade different

zoos to bring the turtles together for breeding.

 

 

By 2004, after conducting field surveys in China and Vietnam,

herpetologists concluded that six of the turtles were still alive. Three

were in Chinese zoos in Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou; two others lived

in a Buddhist temple in Suzhou; and a sixth lived in a famous Vietnamese

lake in the center of Hanoi.

 

 

Negotiations began toward a breeding agreement. By 2005, the turtle in

the Beijing zoo had died. Questions also emerged about whether the Hanoi

turtle was actually the same species. A leading Vietnamese expert argued

it was not. Monks at the Buddhist temple considered their turtles

religious icons and did not want to move them. Last year, a deal was

finally reached between the Suzhou and Shanghai zoos.

 

 

" Then in October, the one in Shanghai died, " said Xie Yan, the China

program director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which has been

instrumental in guiding the discussions. " It was horrible news. "

 

 

In January, herpetologists gathered in Suzhou for a conference about the

turtle. Every zoo in China had been issued an urgent circular asking for

any information about their large turtles. Officials at the Changsha Zoo

responded. The Wildlife Conservation Society sent two experts to Changsha.

 

 

" We were very happy because it was a female and had just laid eggs last

year, " said Lu Shunqing, one of the experts, noting that the eggs were

unfertilized.

 

 

The discovery of the Changsha turtle was critical. In August, one of the

turtles in the Buddhist temple died. Experts visited the temple and

found no proof that the second turtle existed. That left two undisputed

Yangtze giant soft-shells: the female in Changsha; the male in Suzhou.

Neither had commingled with the opposite sex in decades, if ever. And,

more problematic, neither zoo was willing to let its turtle go.

 

 

Restoring Diversity

 

 

Biodiversity, a linguistic marriage of biology and diversity, describes

the variations of life within a particular setting, or ecosystem. That

ecosystem could be a single pond or the entire earth. Implicit is the

idea that the ecosystem is sustained by the coexistence and interaction

between plants, animals and other life forms.

 

 

Few, if any, of the world's modern economic powers, including the United

States, have industrialized without taking a dire toll on plants and

animals. In China, the Communist Party's top-down, authoritarian system

has presided over a destruction of nature. Now, with environmental

problems threatening the economy, the party is trying to engineer a

top-down reconstruction.

 

 

Environmental construction, a government term, is now a high priority.

Yet the results are not always synonymous with biodiversity. Since 1998,

China has banned the domestic timber trade and started a nationwide

reforestation program. China is now one of the few countries in the

world where forest cover is expanding. Yet many scientists say these new

forests are more like plantations than habitat.

 

 

Often, the new forests include only one or two different tree species

and are far inferior to natural forests as incubators for other species.

Unintended results can occur. In Beijing, officials planted millions of

" female " poplar trees without realizing that the females produced higher

amounts of pollen. Workers have had to dig up thousands of the trees, as

floating springtime pollen often seems as thick as snow.

 

 

Restoring animal populations is also complicated. Turtles, which are

both revered and consumed in China, were decimated in the wild by

pollution and hunting. Traders quickly pushed into Southeast Asia, India

and even the United States to meet demand.

 

 

" In conservation terms, it became a crisis, " said Dr. Pritchard, the

American expert. " It was first noticed six or seven years ago. The China

market had become packed with turtles not from China. "

 

 

In fact, Chinese markets teemed with animals, or animal parts, from

around the world. Today, conservationists express particular concern

about the illegal trade in tiger parts. China has signed an

international treaty banning domestic trade of tiger parts, but tiger

conservation groups say the illegal demand in China is a major reason

for the decline of tigers around the world.

 

 

Meanwhile, conservationists worry that officials may one day reopen the

tiger trade to appease Chinese businessmen who had run tiger breeding

farms to produce parts for Chinese traditional medicine.

 

 

Turtles, meanwhile, have made a comeback with the emergence of breeding

farms. Captive breeding also is now a popular government response for

certain endangered species. But many conservationists worry that too

little emphasis is placed on restoring habitat so that animals can be

returned to the wild. More than 10,000 Chinese alligators have been

bred, but reintroducing them to the wild has largely failed.

 

 

Conservationists say environmental policies need to better take

biodiversity into account. Reforestation, for example, was largely an

effort to stop soil erosion, which contributed to floods, and to stall

desertification, the conversion of the land into a desert. The idea of

creating a true forest was not a priority.

 

 

Meanwhile, economic development still dominates. China's richest source

of biodiversity is a " hot spot " in southwestern China along the Nu River

designated by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. Even so, provincial

officials are trying to build a system of dams through the region. Local

officials also have tried to redraw the boundaries for the World

Heritage Site in order to create room for mining.

 

 

Conservationists are trying to speak the language of economics to build

political support for protecting habitat. Rice demand is growing

rapidly, even as farmland is dwindling. For decades, Chinese scientists

have used wild rice species to develop hybrids that increase production.

Now, development and farming are encroaching on wild rice habitat areas

in coastal southern China.

 

 

" If we let it go unchecked, " Dr. Lu, the Peking University professor,

wrote in a report about biodiversity, " Chinese wild rice will become

extinct in fifteen years. "

 

 

Success Far From Certain

 

 

Extinction remains a far more immediate possibility for the Yangtze

giant soft-shell. Next year, scientists will make a search in

southwestern China in hopes of finding another Yangtze giant soft-shell

in the wild.

 

 

In September, the Changsha and Suzhou zoos finally reached a deal.

Neither wanted to move its turtle. But each agreed that scientists could

attempt artificial insemination next spring. Each also signed a contract

entitling a certain number of offspring for each zoo - potential stud

turtles for future captive breeding programs.

 

 

Gerald Kuchling, a herpetologist overseeing the procedure, said success

was far from guaranteed. Several years ago, a tortoise in Hawaii died

after a similar procedure. In May, Dr. Kuchling conducted an ultrasound

examination of the ovaries of the female turtle in Changsha. For years,

she has laid unfertilized eggs in springtime, though zookeepers say the

number has steadily diminished, to about 20.

 

 

" The main problem is really to get a viable sperm sample from the old

male without harming him in any way, " said Dr.. Kuchling, who added that

using small electric shocks is one common method for eliciting a sample.

Manual massage is another.

 

 

In Changsha, zoo officials moved the turtle into a private pool for

better security and monitoring. But experts are concerned that

zookeepers are now warming the water inside the pool during winter, even

though it spent decades in the colder pond outside. They also are

concerned that the pool has no mud to allow the turtle to hibernate.

 

 

Under China's system, the Ministry of Agriculture has oversight of the

turtle. So far, the ministry has agreed to provide 200,000 yuan, or

about $27,000, though none of the money has arrived. Asked for an

interview in October, the ministry declined. But ministry officials

later contacted the zoos and persuaded them to sign a new deal.

 

 

It was decided that the Changsha turtle will be transported to Suzhou

next year. A special breeding pool is supposed to be built. First,

scientists will try artificial insemination. If that fails, the two

elderly turtles will give it a go the old-fashioned way.

 

 

The fate of a species hangs in the balance.