Back From the Edge: Burmese Roofed Turtle

Conservation success stories are becoming fewer as Earth stumbles towards environmental collapse on a global scale.  One small, Southeast Asia river turtle is lucky because man decided to help the species survive extinction.  The Burmese roofed turtle (Batagur trivittata) was considered extinct, but an ambitious conservation program began after it was rediscovered in the wild. A shell was found in a village on the Dokhtawady River in Myanmar.  Shortly thereafter an American turtle collector found a living roofed turtle in a Chinese market, presumably on sale for consumption.  Motivated by these traces of existence, researchers conducted surveys to find wild populations. Guided by locals' descriptions of "duck sized eggs" they found living specimens in two rivers.

A captive population now approaches one thousand individuals in a breeding program begun in 2007. [photo credit: M. Min Win]  Only five or six adult females and two adult males are known to exist in the wild today.  Scientists recently revealed background of the conservation effort in the journal Zootaxa, in which they describe the species and their hatchlings.  The roofed turtle is the second most endangered turtle in the world, despite being abundant at one time.  Hunting and over-exploitation of eggs drove the species to near extinction.  More than half of the world's turtle and tortoise species are threatened with extinction.  They face threats of habitat loss, illegal wildlife trading, pollution, and over consumption.

The conservation goal is to release captive turtles in the Chindwin River, the location of a known wild population, now that they are in little danger of extinction.  Controlled releases began in 2015.  River turtles in the wild can be difficult to monitor, since they can swim several hundred miles from their point of departure.  The captive program has produced about 170 turtles a year for the past two years. Lead researcher Steven Platt told Mongabay.com that with that level of reproduction, these turtles have a renewed future in the wild.