Thanhniennews.com 4 Jul 12;
The carcasses of 50 sea turtles found slaughtered at the house of a man in the southern province of Dong Nai
Police in the southern province of Dong Nai Tuesday found 50 slaughtered sea turtles at the home of a local man, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported Wednesday.
Nguyen Ngoc Dong Anh, 28, told police that he had been buying sea turtles from a person in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang since last October.
He then hired people to slaughter and process them before selling them both locally and to China, Tuoi Tre reported.
Police confiscated all the turtles and sent them to be identified, it said, adding that they measured between 43 centimeters 78 centimeters long.
People suspected of being involved were also summoned for questioning.
Five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles found in Vietnam are the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), the leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea), the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) and the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea).
According to the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the loggerhead and green turtles are “endangered,” while the hawksbill and leatherback turtles are considered to be “critically endangered.”
It listed the olive ridley as “vulnerable.”
