Launch Of Guidebook To Curb Illegal Trading Of Turtles

Bernama 1 Feb 08;

SINGAPORE, Feb 1 (Bernama) -- Trading of tortoises and freshwater turtles in Southeast Asian countries will come under closer scrutiny by enforcement agencies when they are armed with a new guidebook soon.

The guidebook is called, "An Identification Guide to the Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore and Timor Leste".

Written by Dr Mark Auliya of the Kuala Lumpur-based wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic Southeast Asia, it is published in Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesia, English, Chinese and Tagalog.

It lists 44 of the region's endangered species of tortoises and freshwater turtles which are banned for trading, for easy identification by enforcement officers.

Published by Traffic, with the collaboration of the Singapore Zoo, the book was launched by Wildlife Reserves Singapore group chief executive officer Fanny Lai at the zoo premises here, today.

Auliya said the book would help enforcement officers who were currently facing difficulties in identifying the banned species, put a stop to its trade.

Traffic's senior programme officer Chris Shepherd said the tortoises and freshwater turtles were in great demand for food, especially soups, apart from being used for traditional medicines, pets and to a certain extent, for religious purposes.

He said Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were among the many places in the region where the trading and smuggling of the banned species were rampant.

Shepherd said the demand for tortoises and freshwater turtles in Southeast Asia was growing rapidly as it had a good market regionally and internationally, especially China.

"Even the captive breeding of tortoises and turtles cannot cope with its huge demand, and this has led to the harvesting of those caught in the wild in Southeast Asia," he added.

Shepherd said Traffic could not account for the value of the current trading of tortoise and freshwater turtles in the region, but the last data recorded in 2000 showed that about 10 million turtles were traded from Southeast Asia, 50 per cent of which were endangered species.

-- BERNAMA