100 Under 100

by Scott Leslie

  Soon after it was discovered, a plan for the protection and recovery of the La Gomera lizard was put in place. Although searches for the animal in other parts of the island have been fruitless, its habitat at the cliffs near Le Merica where it was rediscovered has been protected, and it’s now illegal to kill the lizards. This has led to a significant growth in the species’ population from single digits to about 90 animals in the wild. In addition, a captive breeding facility, located near the original habitat, was established in 2001 and officially opened two years later. Since then, several dozen lizards have been born there, and in 2008 six of the most suitable captive-reared lizards were released into the wild, with more to follow.

  TURTLES

  Night sweats. Hemorrhoids. Poor circulation. Low white blood cell count. Baldness. Male infertility. Menopause. Gum disease. Bad complexion. And more … These are just some of the ailments traditional Chinese medicine treats with concoctions made of the various body parts of turtles. What’s tragic is that there’s no scientific evidence that any of it actually works, so wild animals are literally being ground into powders for nothing. But there’s more to it than folk medicine. To stop at the pharmacopoeia of turtle parts is to miss the cornucopia: turtle soup, turtle stew, and turtle jelly—dishes that still stir an appetite in Asia. Take turtle jelly, for instance (also known as guilinggao): this medicinal dessert soup, claimed to be good for the complexion, is made using any one of 89 Asian turtle species, 67 of which are on the endangered species list.

  There’s nothing new about grinding up turtles into unproven remedies or consuming them as food; it’s been going on for centuries. Old habits are hard to break. What has changed is that now there are alternatives to such folk remedies that actually work. Moreover, there is a greater choice of how we get our protein. Most important of all, something else is different: precisely because of these old habits, many of the turtle species used in either folk medicine or as food are now plummeting toward oblivion, so it’s illegal to kill them under various national laws and under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Unfortunately, these laws and the convention are usually ignored.

  Need some numbers? They aren’t available for all of Asia, but in Taiwan alone, 2,000 tonnes of shells only (the weight doesn’t even account for whole animals) were imported for traditional medicine use between 1999 and 2008. That number bears repeating: 2,000 tonnes of shells into Taiwan alone. Turtles generally aren’t very big animals, so this volume translates into millions of them being imported into one little corner of Asia in less than a decade. How many more must be used in China, with its 1.3 billion people? And this is just the medicinal use of the shell and doesn’t include countless more turtles that are used as food. The consumption of these slow-moving, harmless animals throughout Asia defies the imagination.

  YUNNAN BOX TURTLE

  The Yunnan box turtle was first described to science in 1906, in southern Yunnan Province, China. It was already rare and wasn’t recorded at all between 1940 and the new millennium despite intensive searching. By everyone’s guess, this small, 15-centimetre-long, rather inconspicuous brown turtle would never be seen again. So, in 2000, the IUCN declared the turtle extinct.

  Turtles are slow, not only in how they move but also in adapting to a changing environment. Despite surviving mass extinctions, ice ages, and other planetary upheavals for more than 200 million years, they can’t adjust to the destruction of their natural habitat over short time scales. They can’t just “up and move” to a new “neighbourhood” to escape human activities.

  The Yunnan box turtle was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though little is known about the species’ original range, at the time of its discovery it was thought to inhabit only the swamps, streams, and ponds near the city of Kunming on the Yunnan Plateau, in southwestern China. Virtually all of this wetland has been swallowed up by the rapid expansion of the city. During the 20th century, its population has grown 60-fold, from about 100,000 to a sprawling metropolis of about six million today. What little wetland habitat that is left is severely polluted. This is affecting more than just turtles: a species of newt endemic to Kunming Lake has recently gone extinct. So perhaps it isn’t all that surprising that the turtle hadn’t been seen in six decades.

  Then, in 2004, somebody from Kunming posted a photo on the Internet asking for help identifying a female turtle. It was a Yunnan box turtle, the first one seen since 1940. Remarkably, just a few months later, a local turtle expert found a male at a pet dealer in Kunming. He was able to buy both the “Internet” female and the male. Having been already declared extinct, however, there was a lot of doubt as to whether the animals were genetically pure Yunnan box turtles or hybrids with other species (hybridizing turtles is a common practice in breeding circles). Any doubt was soon erased as DNA analysis proved they were the real deal. And the good news didn’t end there. Another female was found at a local market in 2006, and a few more live specimens have been found since then.

  Discovering the elusive patch of Yunnan box turtle habitat in 2008

  was the icing on the cake. Efforts are being made by the Kunming Institute of Zoology to protect it. With so few known individuals, the species was poised to quickly slide back into the extinction category, so the Kunming Institute set up a captive breeding program with support from the Turtle Survival Alliance, an international conservation organization. A tentative step toward the possible recovery of the species was made in 2010, when the first Yunnan box turtle eggs were laid at the breeding facility.

  Unfortunately, supply and demand determines much of what happens in the world. In the criminal realm of the black market wildlife trade, extreme rarity all too often triggers the invisible hand of the market to land a heavy blow upon species teetering on the brink of extinction. With a supply next to zero, demand for the Yunnan box turtle on the black market may make it the most valuable turtle of all: it is estimated that the market price for the first one to become available for sale could be as high as US$50,000. Money like that will drive poachers to extreme measures to find any animals left in the wild. The Yunnan box turtle isn’t the only one of its kind in Asia facing an uncertain future: seven other box turtles of the genus Cuora are also critically endangered.

  BURMESE ROOFED TURTLE

  While habitat destruction in China has driven the Yunnan box turtle toward extinction, it is consumer demand by that country’s 1.3 billion people that is forcing turtles to extinction in places like Burma (or Myanmar, as it was unpopularly christened in 1989 by the new military government). An important centre of global turtle diversity, Burma is home to 28 species of tortoises and freshwater turtles, seven of them found nowhere else on earth.

  The Burmese roofed tortoise of the Upper Chindwin River in the far north and the Arakan forest turtle of the great lowland forests of the west are both within a hairbreadth of extinction. And most of the other 26 species found in the country are endangered to varying degrees. As a locus of turtle habitat destruction, hunting for traditional medicine, and capture for the illegal pet trade, Burma is a microcosm of what is happening to the world’s 328 known turtle species, over half of which are endangered.

  An animal that spends its life quietly going about its business in obscure, mosquito-infested swamps, barely uttering a sound, eating mostly plants, and bothering nobody, is likely to go unnoticed. But an entire species going unseen from the 1930s to the 21st century can only mean one of two things: it was either extinct or vanishingly rare. Fortunately, it was the latter. In 2002, in the middle of Mandalay, the religious and cultural centre of Burma, among Buddhist monasteries and pagodas, scientists discovered three Burmese roofed turtles living in a small pond at a temple. Nobody knows how long they’d been there. The species was no longer presumed extinct.

  Over the next couple of years, there were extensive surveys to locate the species in the wild, and by 2004 two tiny populations were found surviving—but just barely—in the Dokhtawady River and along the Upper Chind
win River, in northern Burma. As thrilling as the discoveries of a long-thought-extinct species are, it is estimated that only five to seven breeding adult female turtles remain. Once numbering in the hundreds of thousands, this is all that’s left after centuries of hunting and egg collection have taken their toll.

  Growing up to 60 centimetres long, this large terrapin, native to deep, slow-flowing rivers, is known for the brilliant green colour its head turns during the breeding season and for its rather cute upturned snout. The female lays its eggs in several separate clutches—each holding 3 to 10 eggs—buried in the sand of a riverbank.

  Since they’re laid in winter and don’t hatch until May, for several months they are vulnerable to any disturbance. Unfortunately, there is gold along the Upper Chindwin River, and miners use powerful hoses to wash the surfaces of sandbanks into the river to uncover traces of the precious metal. So, beginning in 2005, conservationists began protecting known nesting beaches along the river and have been removing hatchlings and transferring them to a captive rearing facility at the Yadanabon Zoo in Mandalay. (There’s also another small group of eight breeding adults at this zoo that have produced a small number of young.) By 2010, nearly 400 of the baby turtles had been transferred to the safety of the zoo. And the number of young would be even higher if so many of the eggs laid in the wild hadn’t been infertile. Scientists fear that there are too few male Burmese roofed turtles left to fertilize the eggs that are being laid by the last few females in the wild. So, the plan is to take some of the breeding-age male turtles reared at the Yadanabon Zoo and release them into the Upper Chindwin to breed with the females.

  The turtles have more to worry about than gold mining. As a deep, slow-moving river, the Chindwin is popular for fishing, which in Burma could entail catching fish in traditional gillnets, electrocuting them by passing a powerful current through the water, or blasting them with dynamite. All of these techniques kill many river turtles also. However, as bad as the gold mining and the fishing are, they pale in comparison to the largest potential threat facing the Burmese roofed turtle and anything else that relies on the river. A large hydroelectric dam proposed for the Upper Chindwin has the potential to drown both the nesting beaches and the natural river channel under a large reservoir. Such a project only emphasizes the need to find suitable new habitat the species can be relocated to in the future. The saga of Burma’s endangered species continues.

  ARAKAN FOREST TURTLE

  Living just a few hundred kilometres southwest of the range of the roofed turtle, the Arakan forest turtle of Burma sits near the top of the list of endangered turtles in Asia, or anywhere else for that matter. Previously thought to be extinct for almost nine decades, it was rediscovered by conservationists in 1994 at a local food market in China. It turned up at least one more time when, in 2001, workers for a conservation group bought two live specimens from a vendor at a Chinese market (both animals were subsequently sent to Zoo Atlanta in the United States for breeding). At this point, the species was known only by a few captive animals and museum specimens. This would soon change.

  As one might expect with an animal so elusive and rare, its ecology and natural history are poorly understood. Less than 30 centimetres in length and sporting a brown shell with black mottling, the little turtle had been known in the past by the name pyant cheezar, local dialect for “turtle that eats rhinoceros shit.” A poignant but obsolete name since the Sumatran rhino, the source of the turtle’s gustatory treat, was wiped out decades earlier in the region.

  The Rakhine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary in Myanmar is a 1,750-square-kilometre reserve of virtually impenetrable leech-infested forest and bamboo ecosystems. It’s part of one of the largest remaining tropical lowland forests in Southeast Asia, a wilderness that stretches through the western part of Myanmar from Bangladesh to the Irrawaddy Delta on the Bay of Bengal. Enduring heavy rains here in the spring of 2009 (the season when turtles are presumably more active and easier to find), a team of conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society searched for the elusive animals and found five of them. They were the first of their kind ever recorded in the wild by scientists. They are verging on extinction.

  Hunting for the traditional medicine trade and the food trade is a prime reason for their parlous state, but so have agriculture, logging, road building, and bamboo harvesting taken a toll. Even though the handful of wild turtles was found in an inaccessible sanctuary that is rarely visited by humans, its safety can’t be assumed given the overwhelming commercial demand for the reptiles in Asia. As a precaution against poaching, conservationists have recommended that the Rakhine Yoma sanctuary’s staff, plus scientists and conservation groups, be trained to identify and collect information on the species, which might be used in any future recovery plans for the turtle—currently no such plan exists. They also suggested that guards be placed on roads into the area to help prevent poaching.

  And what of those two forest turtles taken in by Zoo Atlanta in 2001? Very difficult to breed, the slowly reproducing animals mate only once per year, and few offspring survive. The zoo, the only breeding facility for the species in the world, has produced just four Arakan forest turtles since receiving that lucky pair that narrowly escaped the mortar, the pestle, and the pot in 2001.

  YANGTZE GIANT SOFTSHELL TURTLE

  In contrast to the typically proportioned turtles discussed above, the Yangtze giant softshell (also known as Swinhoe’s softshell) is the largest freshwater turtle species in the world, weighing up to 135 kilograms and measuring up to a metre in length. Once common throughout southern China and northern Vietnam, it lives in slow-moving rivers and murky ponds, where fish, frogs, crabs, and aquatic plants are its fare of choice. A pig-like snout, widely spaced eyes, and an enormous, deep head give it a somewhat doleful appearance. Instead of a hard shell (think army helmet), like a typical turtle, it is protected by a flexible, leathery carapace. With a slow metabolism and a relaxed lifestyle, a Yangtze giant softshell turtle can live for a century or more.

  Perilously close to non-existence thanks to the pressure exerted on the land and water by a burgeoning human population in Asia, its population has been decimated mostly by habitat destruction and hunting for the food and folk medicine trade. In 2004, there were thought to be only four left, all males. One each survived in the Suzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing Zoos, and one in a pond in the middle of Hanoi, Vietnam (there is some dispute whether this one is the same species). But the population lurched abruptly toward zero when the Shanghai and Beijing animals died by 2006. Even had they survived, it looked like the end of the line for the giant turtle: a species that had been evolving for almost 250 million years was doomed without females. So, in a truly last-ditch effort, those working to save the turtle sent an urgent call out to hundreds of private and public zoos across China, asking for detailed descriptions of any large turtles they were keeping, on the slim chance that a previously unknown Yangtze softshell would show up. The odds were slim to none, and the odds of finding a female were half that.

  But a reply from a zoo in southern China was intriguing enough that two conservation experts were sent to check out a large turtle living there. That turtle, in one of those odd twists of fate that can change the future, was a sideshow animal left to the zoo over half a century ago by a travelling circus as a payment for a place to perform. It’s been living alone in relative obscurity in its dingy little pool in the Changsha Zoo ever since.

  When the scientists laid eyes on the Changsha turtle, they couldn’t believe their luck: it was a female giant softshell, previously unknown to the wider scientific community; and even better, it was still laying eggs—albeit unfertilized, since it had no mate to finish the job, but there were eggs nonetheless. She was the last known female of her species on earth. Although only the faintest hope flickered that one would be found, there she was, all 40 kilograms of her. She was about 80 years old. The zoo secured her pond with bulletproof glass, remote cameras, and a night watchman. She was too precious not
to protect.

  But a lone female does not a viable species make; her isolated spinsterhood would do nothing to ensure the propagation of her kind. She needed a mate. Enter the 100-year-old male that lives almost 1,000 kilometres away at the Suzhou Zoo. In 2007, an agreement was reached between the two zoos for the female to be transported to Suzhou to meet the male-in-waiting. In reality, he would at first only be contributing his sperm for artificial insemination—actual physical mating would be a last resort because the considerable weight of the animals could result in injury during contact.

  Evidently adapting well to her new home, in 2008 the female turtle laid about 100 eggs that were then artificially fertilized with her suitor’s sperm. Although the eggs were successfully fertilized, the embryos died during incubation. Further attempts since then have also been unsuccessful. Her lifetime of poor nutrition had resulted in a calcium deficiency, preventing the embryos from developing properly. Now, her diet is being supplemented with the hope that this problem will be remedied. Guarded optimism survives that the Yangtze giant softshell turtle might yet be artificially bred back from the brink of extinction. (As of mid-2011, no young had yet been produced.)

  In the spring of 2008, local people reported seeing a previously unreported very large turtle in a pond west of the city of Hanoi. After years of searching unsuccessfully for this species in the wild, conservationists were skeptical at first. On investigating, however, they were able to photograph and confirm that it was indeed a Yangtze giant softshell turtle—the only one known to exist in the wild. It raises the possibility that there could be a few more of them out there, going about their turtle business as they have for eons, oblivious to the plight of their kind.