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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:27 pm
Time: 8:27 pm
Results for tortoises
2 results foundAuthor: Turtle Conservation Coalition Title: Turtles in Trouble: The World’s 25+ Most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles—2011 Summary: Turtles are in serious trouble. They are among the world’s most endangered vertebrates, with about half of their more than 300 species threatened with extinction. We commonly hear about the plight of other animal groups; however, turtles are much more at risk of impending extinction than birds, mammals, amphibians, or sharks and rays, and paralleled among the larger vertebrate groups only by the primates (Turtle Taxonomy Working Group 2010, www. iucnredlist.org, Hoffmann et al. 2010). Turtles throughout the world are being impacted by a variety of major threats, to which many are gradually succumbing. They are being collected, traded, and eaten or otherwise used, in overwhelming numbers. They are used for food, pets, traditional medicine—eggs, juveniles, adults, body parts—all are exploited indiscriminately, with little regard for sustainability. On top of the targeted onslaught, their habitats are being increasingly fragmented, destroyed, developed, and polluted. Populations are shrinking nearly everywhere. Species worldwide are threatened and vulnerable, many are critically endangered, others teeter on the very brink of extinction, and a few have already been lost forever, with eight species and two subspecies having gone extinct since 1500 AD (see table, p. 5). The world’s living tortoise and freshwater turtle species are a remarkable evolutionary success story. There are about 328 currently recognized modern species (452 taxa; Turtle Taxonomy Working Group 2010). Turtles have existed for about 220 million years, since the Late Triassic Era, outlasting their early contemporaries, the dinosaurs. Turtles and tortoises have evolved a remarkable armored shell that has remained relatively unchanged through evolution, and while other vertebrate species have evolved and gone extinct, the basic body form of turtles has remained an obvious testament to their success and their ability to survive millions of years of natural selection. However, the previously successful survival adaptations of turtles, including delayed sexual maturity, high fecundity combined with high juvenile mortality, and a long adult life-span with low natural adult mortality, have left turtle populations vulnerable to new and devastating threats posed by human exploitation and habitat loss. Turtles and tortoises are major biodiversity components of the ecosystems they inhabit, often serving as keystone species from which other animals and plants benefit— Desert and Gopher Tortoises in North America, Giant River Turtles in the Amazon basin of South America, Pig-nosed Turtles in Australia and New Guinea, Giant Tortoises in the Galápagos and Seychelles islands, and large Flapshell and Softshell Turtles in Asia—all represent major components in their environments and are part of the web of interacting and co-dependent species that constitute healthy functioning ecosystems. Without turtles and tortoises, those ecosystems and the critically important human-welfare ecoservices they provide, would gradually suffer from the loss of biodiversity and degrade in ways still incompletely understood and difficult to predict. No turtle species should be lost to extinction, as none are expendable or unimportant. Increasingly, however, human activities are endangering many turtle and tortoise species while driving others into extinction. We are facing a turtle survival crisis unprecedented in its severity and risk. Humans are the problem, and must therefore also be the solution. Without concerted conservation action, many of the world’s turtles and tortoises will become extinct within the next few decades. It is now up to us to prevent the loss of these remarkable, unique jewels of evolution. Without intervention, countless species will be lost. We need to work together for the survival of turtles throughout the world, to understand the risks and threats turtles face, to define survival and conservation objectives, and to develop the successful management strategies and organizational alliances that can help us reach those goals. Details: Lunenburg, MA: IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, Turtle Conservation Fund, Turtle Survival Alliance, Turtle Conservancy, Chelonian Research Foundation, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, and San Diego Zoo Global, 2011. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 23, 2013 at: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/top_25__turtles_in_trouble_2011__2_.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/top_25__turtles_in_trouble_2011__2_.pdf Shelf Number: 128106 Keywords: TortoisesTurtlesWildlife ConservationWildlife CrimesWildlife Management |
Author: Morgan, John Title: Slow and Steady: The Global Footprint of Jakarta's Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Trade Summary: TRAFFIC has been monitoring the trade in tortoises and freshwater turtles in Jakarta's markets, exotic pet shops and at wild animal exhibitions (expos) for more than a decade. The two resulting TRAFFIC reports in 2007 and 2011 revealed that trade in Jakarta was widespread and that a large proportion consisted of illegal trade. Subsequently, TRAFFIC carried out additional surveys of tortoises and freshwater turtles in Jakarta in 2015. This four-month study, aimed to document the trade in Jakarta's markets and pet shops to re-assess the situation in terms of illegal and unsustainable trade. These data were compared to previous TRAFFIC surveys to assess fluctuations and trends over the past decade. During weekly visits to seven locations (comprising three pet stores, two animal markets and two tropical fish markets), and single visits to three reptile expos, all known to be dealing in reptiles, a total of 4985 individuals of 65 different species of tortoise and freshwater turtles were recorded. As time spent in the shops was limited to avoid arousing suspicion, the identification of individual tortoise and freshwater turtle specimens over the survey period was not possible, and therefore the total number of individuals on sale could potentially be an overestimate. Nevertheless, numbers of individuals provided for any given week and the total number of species identified are accurate. Numbers of tortoises and freshwater turtles observed per week ranged from 92 to 983, with a mean of 383 individuals. Only 15 of the species observed were native to Indonesia, of which three were nationally protected. Non-native species made up 7% of individuals on sale, with species originating from Africa (6 species), Asia (), Europe (4), Madagascar (3), North America (16) and South America (7). Almost half (32 of 65) of the species observed on sale were categorized in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as being threatened with extinction. Nine species recorded (one of which was native) are currently listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I, where commercial international trade is prohibited, meaning at least eight of these species were likely to have been illegally imported. A further 27 species were listed in Appendix II and five in Appendix III. With 41 CITES-listed species observed during the surveys, 10 of which were native species and therefore may not appear in the United Nations Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) CITES Trade database because records there are restricted to international trade transactions, and ten of which do appear in the database, 21 species (involving 1758 animals) still remain unaccounted for, suggesting they were brought into the country through illegal means. However, as the UNEP-WCMC database requires a minimum of two years to be updated it is possible that the records are still incomplete. A retrospective analysis of discrepancies between CITES trade records and trade observations from the two previous TRAFFIC surveys in 2004 and 2010, reveal that at least 15 of these CITES-listed nonnative species, involving a minimum of 727 animals, are suspected to have been imported illegally. The findings from the 2015 survey show that more species were found on sale than in the previous two TRAFFIC surveys, as well as more non-native, CITES-listed and threatened species. Numbers of native Indonesian species, both protected and non-protected, have stayed fairly constant since the 2010 survey (14 in 2010 and 15 in 2015). While this does not directly indicate larger volumes of species are being traded compared to previous years, the fact that more species were on display reveals either a change in preference among buyers for more novel species or better trade connections between Indonesian traders and a wider variety of suppliers worldwide. Clearly, efforts to curb the unsustainable and at traders and a wider variety of suppliers worldwide. Clearly, efforts to curb the unsustainable and at times illegal trade in tortoises and freshwater turtles are either insufficient or ineffective. The high number of non-native species offered for sale is facilitated by a long-standing legislative problem in Indonesia, namely, Indonesian law does not regulate domestic trade in any non-native species, including those listed by CITES, once they have crossed the Custom's boundary into Indonesian territory. This legal loophole hampers any law enforcement to counter illegal trade in these non-native species. Furthermore, existing laws covering native protected species are seldom enforced effectively, and traders are rarely prosecuted to the full extent possible under the law: thus illegal trade continues largely uninhibited given the lack of regulation and deterrence. The conservation of many tortoise and freshwater turtle species recorded in these surveys depends in part on the effectiveness of Indonesia's approach to tackling trafficking and market availability; this applies equally to native and non-native species. Details: Southeast Asia Regional Office, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, 2018. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 2, 2018 at: https://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/157301/27865373/1521988425807/Jakartas-Tortoise-and-Freshwater-turtle-trade-web.pdf?token=pcanRKCjUQWp67U%2FakdZK5EB%2BzA%3D Year: 2018 Country: Indonesia URL: https://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/157301/27865373/1521988425807/Jakartas-Tortoise-and-Freshwater-turtle-trade-web.pdf?token=pcanRKCjUQWp67U%2FakdZK5EB%2BzA%3D Shelf Number: 149654 Keywords: Endangered SpeciesTortoisesTrafficking in WildlifeTurtlesWildlife ConservationWildlife CrimeWildlife Trafficking |