Talk about a low profile. They’ve been chugging around inoffensively for the past several million years, pretty much under everyone’s radar. Now Asia’s turtle populations, including Indonesia’s, are in freefall to extinction. In a single human generation, many of Indonesia’s 28 freshwater and dry land turtles will be gone forever. The Asian Turtle Crisis, a term coined in the early 1990s, refers to the massive exploitation of Asian turtles for the Chinese food and medicine market. The world is on the brink of losing a group of animals that managed to survive the upheavals of the last 200 million years, including the great extinction episode that eliminated the dinosaurs.
Turtle meat and blood have been prized by the Chinese for millennia. Until recently, only the wealthy could afford to eat turtle. Now a billion people in China, formerly constrained from regular consumption of luxury foods like turtle by lack of cash, are wielding new-found economic power. It’s been described by scientists as the ‘giant sucking sound’ of millions of turtles being wrenched from their habitats in Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia to meet the insatiable demand and high prices offered by Chinese markets. Researchers have a far better chance of finding rare turtles in the markets of Shanghai or Guangzhou than the wilds of Southeast Asia; more than half the species in the markets are listed as endangered.
An estimated 10 thousand tonnes, or 10 million animals, are harvested in Southeast Asia every year, about 90% of them destined for southern China. Although there are laws banning trade in turtles and protecting a few species, law enforcement is lax and officials are poorly trained. The trade in turtles is brisk, highly developed and ignored by border guards, customs officials and airline personnel on both the export and import sides of the Asian borders. The journeys by land can take several weeks during which the turtles often die of asphyxia, starvation or dehydration.
There are about 90 species of freshwater turtles and tortoises in Asia, and 75% of them are now on the edge of extinction. The gentle animals are harvested by spearing, netting, trapping, hook and line and digging them out of the mud. Some of the larger river turtles are caught by a technique that targets females as they seek to lay their eggs in riverbanks, effectively removing the breeding stock from the population.
Chinese collection boats stop at Indonesian villages in East Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan and Sumatra every couple of weeks, and villagers are offered up to Rp 50,000/kg for live turtles. Because turtles are bought and sold by weight, of course the larger turtles are most sought after. These are the breeding turtles, taking many years to attain maturity. Turtles breed very slowly, with some of the rarer species laying only two eggs a year.
The insatiable appetites of the Chinese for turtles is by far the largest part of the problem, but collection of turtle eggs and destruction of habitat through sand mining, fires, land clearing and development are also issues in the rapid population decline. Turtle farming for the Chinese market is taking place in some areas of Asia, but the focus is on just one or two species of fast-growing soft-shell turtles and they can’t come close to meeting demand. Hard-shell turtles grow so slowly that they are considered uneconomic to farm. And the Chinese prefer the larger, rarer turtles. In Laos, villagers who a decade ago could sell a golden turtle (the blood of which is said to cure cancer) for $100 now get $1,000. “If a Chinese industrialist has a tumor, he’ll offer anything,” says the director the World Wide Fund for Nature in Laos.
The situation in Indonesia is not clear since no one is keeping track, but many islands have been completely stripped of turtles of all kinds. Captive breeding is the only way to ensure the survival of these endangered species.
Ubud-based Don Wells, who has been breeding reptiles for 40 years, has a dream to keep the gene pool of Indonesia’s rapidly disappearing turtles alive. Two years ago he rented some land and built breeding ponds for seven species with a total of about 200 animals. All the species have already bred successfully. The turtles for Don’s captive breeding program come from a variety of sources. Some he buys, but about a third are given to him by the Forestry Department after confiscation and some are acquired from dealers. The latter group are damaged turtles which don’t meet the criteria for collectors – some are missing an eye or leg, or have a hole in their shell.
Don explained to me that only about 10% of turtles hatched in the wild survive the ravages of predators. “When we hatch turtle eggs in captivity and nurture the hatchling for a few months to a year, they are stronger and better able to survive in the wild,” he points out. “These are called Head Start Turtles.” This method has proven highly successful with sea turtle recovery programs as well as in South American freshwater turtle recovery efforts.
Breeding turtles is a lengthy process; the animals breed according to size, not age. Some turtles lay just two eggs and others 25 to 40 eggs per year in several clutches. In nature, a large turtle may take 10 to 20 years to reach breeding age; in captivity this can be reduced to three to five years because captive turtles typically receive a more nourishing diet.
Don’s goal is to build up a gene pool of turtles large enough so that 25% of each species can be released back into suitable ancestral habitats in the wild each year. “The turtle populations have collapsed on many islands in Indonesia so the Chinese no longer go there. Head Start Turtles released on these islands in addition to small surviving turtles will hopefully eventually re-establish the populations. This will take years, but hopefully in that time there will be effective, enforced legislation to protect Indonesia’s turtles. Currently very few of Indonesia’s turtle species are protected.“
The Asian turtle situation is a conservation crisis of a magnitude unique in modern times. Despite some efforts by the Chinese government to curb the trade, ecologists agree the current harvest is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the eradication of species. In the absence of official support, private, self-funded projects such as Don’s could well be the last best hope to ensure survivability of many of these species, given their low reproductive rates and the length of time required for large turtles to reach sexual maturity.
Don and other breeders are in dialogue with the Forestry Department (KSDA) to encourage a law that stops the export of all wild-caught turtles in Indonesia, and only allow captive-bred young from approved legal farms and under a certain size to be exported. Until then, only the commitment of a few private individuals will save Indonesia’s turtles from extinction. Don welcomes financial support for his program as his resources are limited. Anyone who would like to know that turtles will still be trundling around Indonesia in the decades to come can contact Don at dwells2530@yahoo.com
Dragons in the Bath, a collection of Ibu Kat’s stories, is available in Bali from Dijon in Kuta, Ganesha Books at Biku in Seminyak and Ganesha Books and Periplus Books in Ubud. It can be ordered nationally and internationally through www.dragonsinthebath.com <http://www.dragonsinthebath.com>
