Killing A God

credit: G. Kuching

The end of another species is in sight.  Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) is reduced to just three known individuals. One male is in captivity and two females are thought to exist in Vietnamese lakes.  Decades of pollution and damming have eliminated most of the giant reptile's habitat, so it may now be the rarest reptile on the planet.

Rafetus also happens to be the embodiment of a Vietnamese diety, Kim Qui.  Kim Qui plays a pivotal role in Vietnamese legend for he gave Emperor Le Loi a legendary sword with which he freed Vietnam from a thousand years of Chinese rule.  After Le Loi's liberation, Kim Qui asked for the return of the sword for his master, the Dragon King.  Le Loi, grateful to the turtle god for his help, threw the sword into the lake, which he named Hoan Kiem, or "lake of the returned sword."

A female Rafeus died in captivity at a Chinese zoo in April last year, after five attempts to artificially inseminate her.  She never recovered from anesthesia; her male partner survives. She was an estimated ninety years old at her death.  So if the species is to survive extinction, another female must be located and partnered with the male and transferred to a semi-wild enclosure in their last home, Hoan Kiem Lake.  The sex of the two wild turtles, one in Dong Mo Lake and another in Xuan Khanh Lake, are unknown.  There may be more hiding in Laos.  If a healthy female can be found and relocated to the breeding enclosure established by the Asian Turtle Program at Hoan Kiem, she could lay up to 30 to 40 eggs in one clutch, and produce more than one clutch a year.  Such a performance could turn the species away from the precipice of extinction.

picturesque Dong Mo Lake, credit:ATP

As the name suggests, the soft shell giant is a river turtle that inhabited the Yangtze and Red rivers until man's development made that habitat unsuitable.  In their natural habitat, the turtles probably migrated through the rivers and nested on sandbanks in wetlands. Surviving turtles may have become trapped in reservoirs created by dams; unable to breed freely, their population plummeted.  Dong Mo is such a reservoir; while it may be sub-optimal habitat it allowed the long-lived reptile to hang on.   This odd looking turtle with googly eyes and pig-like snout can weigh up to 485 lbs, truly a giant worthy of deification.

Villagers living near the lake see the last inhabitant two to three times a month.  They have come to accept it as "their turtle", and if they go without seeing it, they become worried.  All the villagers and fisherman know their Rafeus is rare, and are motivated to preserve it for future generations.  They have reserved parts of the reservoir as no fishing zones and named the turtle "Trong".  Trong was rescued in 2008 when a dam broke and returned home safely. The future for a rare, giant soft shell turtle worth $2000 on the black medicine market is perilous indeed.  Its fate hinges on finding a female willing and able to breed in generous captivity.  But since Rafeus is also a god of fertility and good luck, perhaps it has all the right stuff to make its resurrection a reality.