The Deadly Shell Game - illegal trade in turtles - includes related article on prehistory

Animals, May, 1999 by Wendy Williams

Can China's live-turtle markets be reformed?

In the summer of 1997, turtle expert William McCord crossed the border from Hong Kong into mainland China. Armed with a small camcorder, the New York veterinarian launched himself on a fact-finding mission. For several years, American and European biologists had been hearing rumors that China had become a huge black hole for the world's turtles--that each year millions and millions of wild turtles were caught from wetland and river systems all around the globe, funneled into a well-established transport system, and shipped to China's vast live-food markets to be slaughtered and eaten.

The turtles were purported to arrive by routes both legal and illegal. And the demand for them was said to have blossomed when China entered the global marketplace in 1989. That was when Chinese currency became convertible and when a vast array of international manufacturing companies began funneling seemingly endless amounts of money into the once isolated nation.

For ages, many Chinese have believed that eating wild turtle builds longevity and intelligence, and indeed many turtles on the Chinese mainland have ended up in soup. But the emergence of what McCord has come to call a global turtle vacuum cleaner is a recent phenomenon. What we have, says Ross Kiester, a biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, "is an unfortunate combination of centuries-old tradition with newfound wealth."

Still, when McCord set out, little hard evidence existed to support the allegations. A turtle lover since childhood and familiar with Pacific Rim countries since his college days, he decided video documentation was the best way to provide proof to the Western world. What he found was, at best, unsettling and, at worst, truly terrifying. On a tape recorded in a single day at one market, the buckets and barrels McCord filmed contained more than 10,000 turtles ready for slaughter, by his own estimate. McCord's tape shows both the gruesome slaughter of the turtles and something of the vast size of the live markets.

Among the turtles, McCord identified at least five species listed as endangered and given special protection by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES): the Hamilton's pond, peacock softshell, Morenia, Ganges river, and Indian roof turtles. There were also, he said, numerous species that had been listed as threatened by CITES. Several American turtles were present in great numbers, including the common snapping turtle and the Florida softshell turtle, although McCord does not recall seeing any American CITES-listed species.

A 1998 report issued by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade-monitoring arm of the World Wildlife Fund, contains a few figures that provide some sense of the sudden burgeoning of the trade. In 1985 only 65 softshell turtles were declared to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for export from the United States. By 1995 that figure had jumped to 38,611. No common snapping turtles were declared for export in 1985, but 10 years later, 17,495 were declared. In 1985, 38 alligator snapping turtles were exported; by 1995, the figure was 5,792. The export figures do not differentiate between turtles exported for the pet trade and those exported for food. But according to TRAFFIC, "the primary reason for the increase in this trade is the demand for these species as food in Asia."

The report is frightening enough, but the numbers of exported turtles may well be much higher. U.S. law says that all turtles exported must be declared, but many believe that large numbers of turtles are being smuggled out in packing crates marked as seafood. This ploy helps smugglers avoid USFWS scrutiny, since seafood shipments are overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Indeed, that a good number of the turtles in Chinese markets are smuggled is made obvious by the presence of CITES-listed animals. And many of those exported under a legal guise may actually also be suspect. Many of the turtles shipped to the markets are said to have been "farm-raised." Observers, however, dispute those claims. Many of the softshell turtles, for example, are the coveted dinner-plate size which means they must be at least a decade old. "We know they're wild-caught," says Robert Johnson, curator of reptiles at the Toronto Zoo. "These animals are in excess of 10 or 15 years of age. Nobody can make a market for an animal that has to be kept that long. Who is going to invest 10 years to get $200? It doesn't happen."

Several points are at issue in this exploding international controversy. First, the very serious issues of humane transport and treatment must be addressed. Second, the smuggling of CITES-listed animals must stop. Third, individual nations must address the question of whether their citizens want their stocks of wild turtles to be decimated by turtle hunters. And fourth--in its own way, perhaps most important--the world must begin to address the many issues brought into the limelight by this crisis, even when they are fraught with cross-cultural conflict.