Hunted turtles need more than a shell

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:

 

 

Hunted turtles need more than a shell

 

LITTLE ROCK, TALLAHASSEE--The Florida Fish & Wildlife

Conserv-ation Commission on April 15, 2009 unanimously voted to ban

capturing or killing freshwater turtles. The proposal--if ratified

in June 2009--would bring into effect the strongest restriction on

turtle hunting in the U.S.

But the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission on March 29, 2009

rejected a proposal to stop " commercial harvest, sales and export "

of turtles.

Commission director Scott Hender-son acknowledged that, " We

have seen a lot of pressure on turtles in the last three years. "

The most recent available data indicates that Arkansas turtle

hunters are exporting about 200,000 turtles per year. However,

Henderson told the Conway Log Cabin Democrat, " Our staff

recommendation is that it is not an emergency and should be included

in our regular fishing regulations process. "

Catch limits may be discussed later this year, but pressure

on the Arkansas turtle population will not be eased this spring.

Audubon Society of Central Arkansas member Bill Shepherd of

Little Rock testified that turtles in Arkansas are in trouble from

multiple directions. " Mortality of eggs and hatchlings is immense, "

Shepherd explained. " Fire ants, feral pigs, raccoons and other

predators eat the turtle eggs. "

But mentioning the threats from other species may have helped

to give the commissioners a pretext for delay in addressing the human

threat, while continuing a multi-year effort promote more pig

hunting.

" In the petition to stop taking of turtles in Arkansas, "

noted the Log Cabin Democrat, " the comment was made that commercial

harvest of turtles has been banned in Illinois, North Carolina,

Alabama and Mississippi. Texas has banned it on public waters.

Oklahoma has begun a three-year moratorium on taking turtles from

public waters, " as of May 2008, " and Georgia is preparing

legislative action on taking turtles. "

State after state is beginning to restrict turtle hunting

because live market demand from China has put U.S. turtles under the

same kind of sudden intensified pressure that has recently extirpated

turtles from much of Southeast Asia.

But the newly enacted restrictions mostly have loopholes that

weaken enforcement if a turtle hunter is not actually caught in the

act. Texas, for instance, forbade hunting turtles in public waters

in 2007, but allowed hunters to continue taking snapping turtles,

soft-shell turtles, and red-eared sliders from private property.

This allows anyone caught with a bag of turtles to claim the turtles

were caught on private property-- and allows Texas turtle hunters to

continue to export about 100,000 turtles per year.

" The demand pits ancient culture against modern conservation

and increasingly threatens turtle populations worldwide, " assessed

Los Angeles Times reporter Kim Christensen in December 2008. " As

Asian economies boomed, more and more people began buying turtle,

once a delicacy beyond their budgets. Driven in particular by

Chinese demand, Asian consumption has all but wiped out wild turtle

populations not just in China, but in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and

elsewhere in the region. Now conservationists fear that the U.S.

turtle population could be eaten into extinction. In 1999, an

international consortium of biologists and others estimated that the

Asian turtle trade had grown to about 10 million of the reptiles a

year, " or just under the sum of current U.S. exports.

" By many accounts, demand has since grown dramatically, "

Christensen found. " Those who catch turtles typically use baited

hooks on trotlines, some stretching for miles. Their catch is

bagged boxed and shipped live to U.S. customers on both coasts and

the Gulf of Mexico--and to Asian gateways such as Hong Kong and

Taiwan. "

 

Hunting vs. roadkills

 

Within less than a decade turtle hunting has become the

greatest threat to the survival of freshwater turtles in the U.S.

since the invention of automobiles added roadkills to the hazards

they must evade in moving among ponds, ditches, and waterways in

their annual search for a mate.

Motor vehicles kill about 1.6 million turtles per year in the

U.S., ANIMAL PEOPLE estimated in 1994, by comparing data from a

variety of regional and local counts. Though traffic in turtle

habitat has increased, the roadkill toll has probably dropped since

then. Efforts to modify roads to protect turtles at favored crossing

points have helped, but mainly there are just fewer turtles to make

the crossings.

More than 31.7 million live turtles, nearly 11 million per

year, were exported legally from the U.S. between November 2002 and

November 2005, according to the World Chelonian Trust.

" Animals exported from the United States have four primary

destinations, " World Chelonian Trust director Darrell Senneke

reported in 2006. " The first is directly to the food markets of

China and Southeast Asia. The second is to Asian turtle farms where

the majority are 'grown out,' as in our cattle feed lots, and then

sent to the markets. The third is for breeding stock in turtle

farms. The fourth is for the huge pet markets around the world. "

Only about 737,000 of the turtles exported alive from the

U.S. were wild-captured--but turtle farming also cuts into the wild

population.

" Baby turtles are being sent to China, " Iowa Department of

Natural Resources conservation officer Joe Fourdyce told Des Moines

Register reporter Juli Probasco-Sowers after the July 2008 arrest of

two men for allegedly catching turtles by illegal means, with a net

lacking an identification tag. Facing fines of up to $2,299 apiece,

the men reportedly intended to tell their catch to breeders. The

breeders would collect the eggs from the captured turtles, hatch the

eggs in an incubator, and sell the hatchlings to China.

As well as using wild-caught breeding stock, some turtle

farmers use eggs or hatchlings collected from wild nests.

" Arguments can be made both for and against this trade, "

Senneke acknowleged. " Some people opine that the shipment and sales

of American species produced in large numbers actually save

endangered foreign species by taking their place in the food and pet

markets. Others argue that the shipment and subsequent release of

American species, " either through accidental escapes or deliberate

release as a religious ritual, " do tremendous damage to the ecology

of countries around the globe with breeding colonies of high

fecundity American turtles competing with possibly endangered native

species. Still other people will argue that there is no such thing

as an ethically acceptable trade in turtles whatsoever. "

 

Slow recovery--or none

 

Unlike most hunted species, Senneke pointed out, turtles

recover slowly from intensified predation, if at all.

" Turtles are very long lived animals, " Senneke wrote, " who,

under normal conditions, have a combination of high adult survival

and very low hatchling and juvenile survival. Low recruitment into a

population is offset by the long breeding life of the adults under

normal circumstances. When an adult turtle is removed from the wild

it is not just that turtle who is removed, but also the reproductive

potential of that animal over a breeding life that may exceed 50

years. Research has shown that there is no compensation of increased

hatchling survival in response to a reduced adult population. As a

result, removal of even a few adults from a population can result in

the decline and eventual loss of the entire population. "

Only about 50 people are involved in catching freshwater

turtles in Florida, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation

Commission believes, but they sell about 560,000 pounds of turtle

per year, mostly softshell species, for between $0.75 and $1.40 per

pound.

But the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission may

have underestimated the numbers of people trying to cash in while

turtles can still be found in the wild-- and their impact. In Iowa,

for example, where reportedly just four turtle trapping licenses

were sold in 1998, 176 were sold in 2008. The volume of turtles

caught in Iowa increased from 29,000 pounds in 1987 to 235,000 pounds

in 2007, Iowa State University ecology professor Fred Janzen told

Marco Santana of Associated Press.

Several states lack even a method of estimating hunting

pressure on their turtle populations.

" Because there are no regulations, " explained Joey Holleman

of the Columbia State in March 2008, " South Carolina officials say

it's impossible to come up with an accurate number of turtles taken

from the Palmetto State. However, one Louisiana turtle farmer

claimed to take 30,000 turtles from South Carolina in 2003. "

" We're the last state where it's open warfare on turtles, "

Riverbanks Zoo curator of herpetology Scott Pfaff told Holleman.

" It's the only animal exploited for food that requires no permit, so

the species is being exterminated and South Carolina gets nothing. "

The South Carolina legislature in 2008 considered bills to

curtail hunting eight turtle species and to stop all turtle hunting,

but neither bill became law. As the May 2009 edition of ANIMAL

PEOPLE went to press, both houses of the South Carolina legislature

had passed a bill in yet-to-be-reconciled amended forms, which would

provide that " It is unlawful for a person, or a group of individuals

traveling in one vehicle, to remove, or attempt to remove from this

State more than ten, either in one species or a combination of

species, " nine named turtle species. This would be in combination

with an annual export limit of 20 turtles.

A loophole is that the bill, H 3121, allows the continued

sale of yellowbelly and snapping turtles " if these turtles were taken

from a permitted aquaculture facility or a private pond pursuant to a

permit issued by the department at the request of the owner or

owner's agent. "

Georgia legislators Joe Wilkinson, Bob Lane, Calvin Hill,

and Ed Lindsey on March 3, 2009 introduced a bill, HB 603, which

would halt turtle hunting, but six weeks later the bill had yet to

move.

" Georgia law currently allows an unlimited number of

freshwater turtles to be harvested from the wild and sold as food, "

summarized the Center for Biological Diversity, Satilla Riverkeeper,

Altamaha Riverkeeper, and the Center For Food Safety in a 2008

petition to the legislature. " Under this regime, every

non-protected freshwater turtle in Georgia can be legally collected

and sold. Unregulated harvest and commercial collection are rapidly

depleting Georgia's wild turtle populations. "

The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity has joined

local organizations in eight Midwestern and Southern states in

seeking to stop or at least significantly slow the hunting toll on

turtles.

" People in states where there's either no regulation or lax

regulations are literally strip mining streams, " explained Center

for Biological Diversity spokesperson Jeff Miller. " We're going to

see some catastrophic results. It's way beyond anything that's

sustainable. "

Editorially agreed the New York Times on January 26, 2009,

" States should impose much tighter restrictions on the harvesting and

export of wild turtles. Internationally, the problem is more

complicated. There have been efforts to monitor the species of wild

turtles found in Chinese markets, but as long as the appetite for

turtles--and traditional medicines derived from them--persists, we

fear it will be hard to curtail such a profitable and disastrous

trade. "

" The situation of turtle conservation in China is improving, "

Hainan Normal University chelonian researcher Shi Haitao in July 2007

told 200 delegates to a joint meeting of the Turtle Survival Alliance

and the World Conservation Union's tortoise and freshwater turtle

specialist group at Zoo Atlanta. According to Shi Haitao, the

volume of turtles sold at the Qingping market in Guangzhou had fallen

80% in 10 years.

But there may be two reasons for that beyond increased

concern for turtles.

One is that Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville,

Arkansas, has opened superstores in the region that sell live

turtles and frogs. So have competitor chains, including Carrefour

of France, Metro of Germany, and Tesco of Britain.

Wal-Mart chief executive officer Lee Scott declared in

October 2005 that Wal-Mart has a duty to be a " good steward for the

environment. " But Wal-Mart has yet to respond to the question ANIMAL

PEOPLE asked of Scott and the company multiple times in 2007, " How

does Wal-Mart reconcile selling turtles (and frogs) for human

consumption in your stores in China with your policy of

sustainability? "

The other reason for falling turtle sales at the Qingping

market may be that the world is running out of turtles.

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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