Turtles and Tortoises Are in Trouble

Abstract

Turtles and tortoises (chelonians) have been integral components of global ecosystems for about 220 million years and have played important roles in human culture for at least 400,000 years. The chelonian shell is a remarkable evolutionary adaptation, facilitating success in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. Today, more than half of the 360 living species and 482 total taxa (species and subspecies combined) are threatened with extinction. This places chelonians among the groups with the highest extinction risk of any sizeable vertebrate group. Turtle populations are declining rapidly due to habitat loss, consumption by humans for food and traditional medicines and collection for the international pet trade. Many taxa could become extinct in this century. Here, we examine survival threats to turtles and tortoises and discuss the interventions that will be needed to prevent widespread extinction in this group in coming decades.

A simple model for the evolution of temperature-dependent sex determination explains the temperature sensitivity of embryonic mortality in imperiled reptiles

“…Data was collected from previously published studies collated in the Reptile Development Database (Noble et al, 2018a). Only chelonians were considered in this study, as they are of extreme conservation concern (Rhodin et al, 2018;Gibbons and Lovich, 2019;Stanford et al, 2020), they represent the overwhelming majority of species in the world that exhibit TSD, they feature a pattern of TSD different from squamates and the tuatara (see below), and very limited data was available on crocodilians, especially for TPivs. Thus, studies from the Reptile Development Database were included in the present study if they featured (1) a turtle species with TSD (Sabath et al, 2016), 2 Exclusion factors included genotypic sex determined species (GSD), in situ incubation, or fluctuating temperature trials.…”

“…Despite recent and widespread interest in reptile conservation (Roll et al, 2017), reptile populations are declining globally (Todd et al, 2010). Turtles, for example, are among the most imperiled group of vertebrates in the world (Rhodin et al, 2018;Gibbons and Lovich, 2019;Stanford et al, 2020). Natural rates of replacement and population growth are low in most turtle species, and because of high juvenile mortality, slow life histories (e.g., Kondo, Morimoto, Sato, & Suganuma, 2017), and low genetic diversity (Romiguier et al, 2014), populations are unable to adapt to environmental change on the time scale of anthropogenic impacts (Hawkes et al, 2009).…”

Changes of China's regulatory regime on commercial artificial breeding of terrestrial wildlife in time of COVID-19 outbreak and impacts on the future

“…Turtles are highly valued as food. Artificially bred turtles currently meet a large share of the demand but the wildlife population of some species are still in danger of being over-exploited ( Feng, 2012 ; Gong et al, 2017 ; Ruan, 2014 ; Stanford et al, 2020 ).…”

Bear trade in the Czech Republic: an analysis of legal and illegal international trade from 2005 to 2020

“…The incessant demand for and high commercial value of wildlife as pets, food, traditional medicines, luxury goods, ornaments, trophies, etc. is driving the declines and extinctions of an ever-expanding list of species (Harrison et al 2016;Voigt et al 2018;Stanford et al 2020). Tigers, for example, coveted for traditional medicinal use and trophies, are on the brink of extinction (Wong and Krishnasamy 2019), and depletion of Asian pangolin species has resulted in the over-harvesting and illegal trafficking of African pangolins in tremendous volumes (Challender et al 2016;Gomez et al 2016;Heinrich et al 2016).…”

“…Tigers, for example, coveted for traditional medicinal use and trophies, are on the brink of extinction (Wong and Krishnasamy 2019), and depletion of Asian pangolin species has resulted in the over-harvesting and illegal trafficking of African pangolins in tremendous volumes (Challender et al 2016;Gomez et al 2016;Heinrich et al 2016). Lesser studied species such as tortoises and freshwater turtles, amphibians and songbirds are being silently extinguished for the exotic pet trade (Auliya et al 2016;Lee et al 2016;Nijman et al 2019;Shepherd et al 2019;Stanford et al 2020). The list of species threatened by illegal and unsustainable trade is growing, and among these species in peril are bears.…”