Turtle: For some, it's the other white meat

John Platt in 60-Second Extinction Countdown
Scientific American 22 Jul 09;

American freshwater turtles are being harvested at an unsustainable rate to feed the voracious appetite for turtle meat in Asia, warns the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona.

Earlier this month, the organization petitioned eight U.S. states (Arkansas , Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee) to ban turtle hunting in all public and private waters. Meanwhile, Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has proposed its own ban, and will present a draft of the rules at a Commission meeting next month. The Commission recently estimated that 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles are flown out of Tampa International Airport every week, enroute to food markets in Asia.

According to data collected by the CBD, turtle harvesting has increased dramatically over the past decade. Harvesters in Iowa, for example, collected 235,000 pounds of turtles in 2007, up more than 800 percent from the 29,000 pounds collected in 1987. In Arkansas, nearly 600,000 turtles were collected between 2004 and 2006.

While some freshwater species are endangered in the U.S., protection is difficult since many species look similar to untrained eyes. Alligator snapping turtles (Macrochelys temmickii), which are protected by state law in Iowa and Illinois, look almost exactly like common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina), which are not endangered.

So why is turtle collection from the wild such a problem? "Because freshwater turtles are long lived (some may reach 150 years of age), breed late in life, and have low reproductive and survival rates, they are highly vulnerable to overharvest," the CBD said in a statement.

Would banning the wild-turtle trade help? Supporters of such a move point to Texas as an example. The state outlawed most turtle harvesting two years ago, and as a result saw Asian exports through Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport drop from 122,610 turtles in 2004 to just 8,882 in 2007, according to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service numbers cited by the Dallas Morning News. Commercial harvesting of three turtle species from private waters is still allowed under Texas law.

U.S. Turtle Demand Booming in China
Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 24 Jul 09;

One growing export has tipped the U.S.-China trade balance: live turtles.

Each year millions of U.S. turtles that are hatched in farms or caught in the wild are devoured in China, where the onetime delicacy has become more available to the masses.

The Chinese eat turtles—especially softshell and snapper species—and use the animals' parts in traditional medicines that are said to boost everything from the immune system to sexual prowess.

But conservationists worry that this high demand will cause some U.S. turtle species to be eaten to extinction.

That's why the U.S. state of Florida just passed a tough new law that effectively ends commercial wild-turtle harvests. (See a Florida map.)

The new statute, made effective July 20, limits individuals to a "noncommercial use" of just one turtle a day for most of the state's species.

Florida's swamps, rivers, and coasts offer rich habitats for 25 species of turtles, several of which are declining due to human harvesting, according to the Florida Turtle Conservation Trust.

Insatiable Appetite

Fears of turtle overconsumption are grounded in some sobering statistics, experts say.

Chinese demand has already decimated populations in countries such as Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, and Indonesia, according to the nonprofit Conservation International.

The group estimates that 75 percent of Asia's 90 freshwater turtle and tortoise species are now threatened.

This drop has placed greater pressure on places where the animals are still plentiful, including many parts of the United States.

Florida-based biologist Matthew Aresco, a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, has spent more than a decade studying the state's turtles.

Dramatic and quick declines in Florida turtles prompted the recent law, Aresco said.

In the past several years, people working in the state had noticed a large number of turtles being harvested, he said.

"For a time no one really understood what was going on—that Asian buyers had come into Florida and now there was a big increase in demand."

Background statistics cited in Florida's draft turtle rule state that declared exports of U.S. wild-caught softshell turtles grew by 400 percent between 2000 and 2004.

Turtle Farms

Patricia Behnke, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Tallahassee, said that monitoring turtle populations is difficult.

But continuing to harvest turtles without some form of monitoring could put a major dent in the reptiles' populations, she said.

"We thought the most conservative measure—and the best thing for freshwater turtles—is to ban commercial harvests from the wild and move this into the aquaculture industry," she said.

American turtle farming is already a big business: Nearly 32 million live turtles were exported from the U.S. between 2003 to 2005, according to a study by World Chelonian Trust, a turtle conservation group.

And of those, more than 31 million—a large amount of which were red-eared sliders—were farmed hatchlings shipped to Asian aquaculture facilities that then raised the turtles to adulthood.

But the number of wild-caught turtles legally shipped during the period is still staggering, the study said—some 700,000.

That's a particularly tough blow, because turtles are long-lived animals: Most Florida species, for example, take between 3 to 13 years to reach reproductive age.

Sustainable Harvest?

At least one fisher who has long relied on income from turtle harvesting was disappointed with the new law.

William Shockley, a second-generation commercial turtle fisher in Okeechobee, Florida, said that tough new laws like this one are a political overreaction.

"For them to say the things they've been saying is ludicrous. They don't have the science to back it up," he said.

"They've based a lot of their studies on other states that don't have a climate like Florida's, especially South Florida. When the turtles can flourish here, they will flourish."

Shockley said fishers know that turtle catches fluctuate annually with the amount of rainfall, which determines the area of wet habitat available for turtles.

They've also long known how to manage turtle harvests sustainably, he stressed.

Peter Paul van Dijk, director of Conservation International's freshwater turtle and tortoise conservation program, agreed that some turtle species probably could be harvested sustainably under traditional fishing systems.

These programs employ limited "take" quotas and provide ample time for populations to grow.

"But the problem is that demand is potentially insatiable," van Dijk explained.

"It's basically an open-ended fishery, and unless you have real controls in place, there is every financial incentive to just overharvest, take the profit now, and then move on to another species."

Van Dijk hopes that farming will be able to keep the heat off wild turtle populations.

"My personal opinion is that of the various possible trends, I would think that farming turtles would be a lesser evil than [wild] collection."

Shell Shocked

But turtle farming isn't without its problems.

Most farmers rely on collecting wild animals to supplement breeding stocks on the farms.

Some farms have also been unmasked as "laundering" operations for the illegal sale of wild turtles—such as a New York State racket that state investigators dubbed "Operation Shell Shock."

The March 2009 undercover investigation of trade in protected New York State reptile and amphibian species led to charges against 18 people.

But Florida biologist Matt Aresco—who also directs a conservation reserve that houses tortoises—said that farms may well be the turtle's best bet.

"It will be a positive if the farms become self-sustaining and operate with their original breeding stock rather than continuing to go to the well," i.e., collecting more wild turtles for breeding, he said.

"That's an important part of it, and it has the potential to be a big loophole if it's not regulated and enforced."