2022 Turtle Survival

Turtle Survival

2022

A Letter from the President

When I write my annual memo, I try to reflect on the high points of the past year and put them into perspective. Reconstructing this year is especially challenging as there has been A LOT going on with our field programs, in terms of financial support, strategic planning, and—most importantly—rewilding.

First, in terms of securing the future of our conservation programs, one of the most consequential actions in Turtle Survival Alliance’s history took place recently when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Division of International Conservation announced their first funding opportunity for Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles (TFT). Following years of pushing from key partners within the TFT community, in 2019 Congress finally authorized expansion of the Marine Turtle Conservation Act (MTCA) to include TFTs. The call for proposals was announced in 2021 with a deadline of October 4, and the entire Turtle Survival Alliance team and extended alliance of partners began planning. The final two weeks leading up to the deadline became an all-hands-on-deck moment and, I believe, one of our finest hours. COO Andrew Walde and Development Director Amy Carter deserve much credit here for pushing this arduous process to completion—and their perseverance certainly paid off. Roughly six months later we were notified that we had been approved for 11 grants or 100% of the proposals we submitted—a grand slam! The total amount to Turtle Survival Alliance programs, projects, and partnerships was $623,800 for work in eight countries—including several multi-year projects—and a major boon for some of our programs. In all, 25 TFT proposals were funded and we hope this trend will continue (see p. 56).

When it comes to charting the future, it’s essential to have a strategy that defines important goals and metrics. I am happy to announce that, after two years of hard work and weekly meetings, our Field Conservation Committee has produced an impressive, comprehensive document, prioritizing both the species and the countries where we will focus moving forward. The process was coordinated by Board member Hugh Quinn, who deserves enormous credit for steering this process to completion (see p. 64).

And a recap of this past year would not be complete without mentioning rewilding. Getting turtles and tortoises out of head start or rescue facilities and back into their natural landscape is the ultimate goal of why we do what we do. In Madagascar, in July 2021 and March 2022, we conducted the first full-scale reintroduction of 1,000 Radiated Tortoises—a two-step soft release process—that required two years of planning and community engagement (see p. 26). Another group of 1,000 Burmese Star Tortoises were rewilded in Myanmar and, following a similar strategy, ten headstarted Asian Giant Tortoises were released for the first time in Bangladesh (see p. 33). In India, ten Northern River Terrapins were released with satellite transmitters in January 2022 and watching their extensive movements throughout the vast wetland morass of the Sundarbans was both fascinating and impressive (see p. 40). Several made it into adjacent Bangladesh, two of which were captured by fishermen, returned to authorities, and then released to swim another day, an inspiring example of two countries working together for the sake of conservation (see p. 46).

Finally, as I reflect on the many challenges that we face in trying to save turtles and tortoises, the one that looms largest in my mind is our lack of capacity for turtle conservation in turtle diversity hotspots, particularly Southeast Asia. The paucity of trained field biologists to conduct meaningful field research is alarming and represents a serious impediment to moving the needle to the positive side. With the illegal wildlife trade escalating, we need boots on the ground to monitor turtle populations. Until we can address this issue by providing a meaningful pathway to careers in conservation, we will continue to lose ground. On a positive note, I intend to make this my rallying cry till the end of my career.

Rick Hudson, President

Lance Paden

TABLE OF CONTENTS

11 Giant South American River Turtles

18 Dalton State Turtle Program

36 West Africa Turtle Conservation

56 Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Fund

64 TSA Field Conservation Strategy

Range County Updates

6 AZA SAFE 8 Turtle Survival Center 14 United States - NAFTRG

16 United States - Bog Turtles 20 Mexico

Belize

Colombia

Madagascar 33 Bangladesh - Creative Conservation Alliance 38 Kenya 40 India

46 Bangladesh - Zoo Vienna 47 Indonesia

50 South Sudan / Uganda

Myanmar

4 Board Updates

Partners 59 Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz (AGA) e.V. Interview 60 Behler Award

62 Pritchard Award

63 Turtle Conservation Fund

71 Faces of Turtle Conservation

72 Donor Recognition

About the Cover: The Guaporé/Iténez River forms the border of Bolivia and Brazil. Along a remote stretch in the State of Rondônia (Brazil) and Beni Department (Bolivia), we find one of the world’s great wildlife gatherings: the largest known nesting aggregates of critically endangered Giant South American River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa). As many as 70,000 female turtles may gather there annually in a mass nesting event on the river’s sandy beaches. Following a hiatus due to COVID-19, in 2022 a team from Turtle Survival Alliance, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Ecovale joined to develop a standardized methodology to estimate the population of nesting females and to strengthen conservation actions for the turtles and their habitat on both sides of the border. Permanent protection for this important stronghold is crucial to ensuring the long-term survival of this incredible wonder of nature—perhaps the largest gathering of river turtles in the world. Photo: Camila Ferrara

About Turtle Survival Alliance

The board and staff of Turtle Survival Alliance recently updated our mission and vision statements to better reflect our ultimate goal to restore wild populations of tortoises and freshwater turtles. We envision a planet where turtles thrive in the wild, and are respected and protected by all humans. To further this vision, the mission of Turtle Survival Alliance is to protect and restore wild populations of tortoises and freshwater turtles through science-based conservation, global leadership, and local stewardship.

Formed in 2001, Turtle Survival Alliance is a global conservation organization that works to create a planet where tortoises and freshwater turtles can thrive in the wild. Our science-based initiatives are directed by local leaders, inspiring sustainable, community-based stewardship to prevent extinctions. Where populations cannot yet succeed in the wild, our breeding programs ensure their future survival. Because turtles are ancient, remarkable creatures— and to save them, we must all play a role.

During its first four years, Turtle Survival Alliance operated as a task force for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group. In 2004, we became an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, initially with a home base in Texas at the Fort Worth Zoo. With growth also came the need for a facility to house and provide assurance colonies for some of the world’s most endangered turtles and tortoises. Thus, in 2013, we established the Turtle Survival Center in rural coastal South Carolina, now home to more than 600 animals.

With your help, Turtle Survival Alliance provides conservation breeding programs, field research, culturally

appropriate conservation initiatives, community engagement and outreach, and shares new research and techniques throughout the global turtle and tortoise conservation community. Through collaborations with zoos, aquariums, universities, private turtle enthusiasts, veterinarians, government agencies, and conservation organizations, Turtle Survival Alliance is widely recognized as a catalyst for turtle conservation, with a reputation for swift and decisive action.

TSA Board and Staff 2022

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Allison Alberts, PhD

JJ Apodaca, PhD

Heather Barrett

Becca Cozad

Andre Daneault

Bill Dennler

Michael Fouraker

Kim Gray

Tim Gregory, PhD

Brian Horne, PhD

Rick Hudson

John Iverson, PhD

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Andrew Walde

Cristina Jones

Patricia Koval, Chair

Palmer “Satch” Krantz

Jackie Litzgus, PhD

Lonnie McCaskill

John Mitchell

Russ Mittermeier,PhD

Vivian Páez, PhD

Hugh Quinn, PhD

Anders Rhodin, MD

Frank Slavens

Craig Stanford, PhD

ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATOR

Jan Holloway

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT

Amy Carter

DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Jordan Gray

David Hedrick

Chelsea Rinn

TURTLE SURVIVAL CENTER STAFF

Carol Alvarez, RMA, NCPT

Clinton Doak

Cris Hagen

RANGE COUNTRY PROGRAM LEADERS

Dave Collins

Germán Forero-Medina, PhD

Kalyar Platt, PhD

Herilala Randriamahazo, PhD

Shailendra Singh, PhD

Dhritiman Mukherjee/Biont Creations; Camila Ferrara

Where We Work

BANGLADESH

What We Do

Habitat Protection

Conservation Breeding

Education and Outreach

Field Research and Monitoring

Training and Capacity Building

Head Start and Reintroduction

Rescue and Rehabilitation

Community Engagement

Advocacy

Welcome New Board Members

This year, Turtle Survival Alliance welcomed Becca Cozad, Jacqueline Litzgus, Vivian Páez, Craig Stanford, and JJ Apodaca (ex-officio) as new members of the Board of Directors. In addition, we welcomed back returning members, Lonnie McCaskill and Anders Rhodin.

We also bid farewell to retiring member, Susie Ellis, who first joined the Board in 2013, and has served multiple terms in rotation. Susie brought a wealth of experience in conservation planning and was also instrumental in forming and chairing our EDI Committee. On behalf of the entire Turtle Survival Alliance Board of Directors, we extend our sincere gratitude for her years of service, sacrifice, and support.

Dr. JJ Apodaca (ex-officio) is a conservationist and geneticist who received his doctoral degree from the University of Alabama and has been at the forefront of developing genetic databases to help put confiscated turtles back into the wild. JJ has served as the national chair for Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and is currently Executive Director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy. He also is founder of Tangled Bank Conservation, which focuses on conserving rare species worldwide.

Becca Cozad received her Masters from the University of Georgia and is currently

a research biologist at Nokuse Plantation, a private conservation preserve in the Florida panhandle. Becca also holds leadership positions in several organizations, including Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (PARC), Southeast PARC, and Gopher Tortoise Council.

Jackie Litzgus, PhD, received her doctoral degree in Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology from the University of South Carolina and is currently a Full Professor of Biology at Laurentian University (Canada). Jackie’s research program investigates

geographic variation in the life history and behavior of freshwater turtles and snakes, and provides opportunities to train the next generation of conservation professionals.

Dr. Vivian Páez, is a Colombian conservation biologist who works with amphibian and reptile species, especially freshwater turtles and is recently retired from the Biology Institute of the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín. She created the Herpetology Museum of the Universidad de Antioquia. She has received both the Sabin Turtle Conservation Prize for her career dedicated to turtle research and con

servation and, this year, the Behler Turtle Conservation Award, being the first Latin American recipient of this distinction.

Craig Stanford, PhD, is Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California, and is a wellknown authority on animal behavior and conservation biology. He has conducted field research on tortoises and turtles for more than 20 years in Southeast Asia and Mexico, and is the author of 17 books and 150 scholarly and popular publications on topics related to animal biology. He is Chair of the IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

The Turtle Survival Alliance is proud to acknowledge the following organizations that make our work possible. The organizations listed here provide a range of services supporting our mission, including guidance, networking, strategic planning, funding, husbandry, rescue, animal management, marketing and public relations, field research, logistical and technical support, salaried positions, and other resources.

AZA SAFE

One Baby Turtle at a Time

Restoring a Blanding’s Turtle population

by Bryan Windmiller

When I was an environmental consultant, I often spent my days joyfully studying rare salamanders and turtles. My job was to evaluate the impacts of proposed projects on rare wildlife species. The happiness I felt experiencing these wonderful opportunities to see and study rare species turned to sadness, though, as I realized the construction work that ultimately paid my salary would likely signal the demise of these populations. I was determined to find a way to push back against the loss of the local biodiversity that brought me so much joy.

A small consulting contract in 2003 allowed me to begin a conservation effort focused on the Blanding’s Turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) that lived in Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a short distance from my home. My colleagues and I soon determined that this regionally large population of a rare species had declined by more than half since an earlier study, 30 years prior. Our data revealed that adults had high annual survival rates, with many at least 50 or 60 years of age. There were, however, few individuals younger than 16-20 years old, the age at

which females begin to nest. As older adults died, there were no youngsters to replace them.

We began searching for ways to boost the odds that young Blanding’s Turtles would survive to adulthood. By radio-tracking adult females, we were able to protect about half of all nests each year from predation, likely more than doubling the number of turtles that hatched successfully. This alone, however, was insufficient; a study by Justin Congdon estimated the odds of a Blanding’s turtle surviving from hatching to adulthood at only 3%. We began collecting the hatchlings and raising them for nine months in captivity. In this “headstarting” process, the average hatchling increased its weight 15-fold, growing to the size of a wild three to five-year-old by release and, we hoped, be better able to evade predation. MassWildlife had successfully pioneered this method with Northern Red-bellied Cooters (Pseudemys rubriventris) beginning in the 1980s, more than tripling the wild population in the state.

At first, we headstarted 10-20 hatchling turtles annually with partners at Zoo New England and the New England Aquarium. In 2009, with the blessing of the

Emilie Wilder

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and MassWildlife, I turned to local schools for help in raising the Blanding’s Turtle hatchlings in their classrooms. The idea proved popular and the number of participating schools grew quickly. We gave husbandry lessons and classroom presentations to each headstarting class and took the students out on field trips, the final one culminating in releasing the young turtles back into the wild. We then

Clockwise from left: A 12-year-old female Blanding’s Turtle at Great Meadows. Prior to Zoo New England’s headstarting project, which began in 2007, there were very few Blanding’s Turtles in the population younger than 20 years of age. Today, approximately 80% of the population, estimated to be greater than 350 individuals, consists of headstarted juveniles; The author releasing headstarted Blanding’s Turtles with a group of school children who raised the turtles for 9 months in their classroom; A Blanding’s Turtle hatchling emerges from a protected nest in Massachusetts. A turtle this size is an easy snack for many predators; hatchlings are readily consumed by even relatively small animals, including chipmunks, bullfrogs, and grackles; Cashew, a Blanding’s Turtle headstarted in a classroom in 2012 and caught again in the wild as a healthy juvenile in 2020.

tracked the growth and survival of more than 100 headstarted individuals for up to six years post-release.

I began doing this work as an offshoot of the small ecological consulting company that I managed. But in 2013, I decided to go all-in and founded an NGO, Grassroots Wildlife Conservation, with a mission to restore declining populations of rare animals and plants in New England and involve local people in those efforts. By 2018, we had merged into Zoo New England, our long-time conservation partner, becoming the zoo’s new Field Conservation Department. With increased staff, we scaled up our field monitoring, headstarting efforts, and classroom programs, and have, to date, released nearly 700 headstarted young Blanding’s Turtles at Great Meadows. Radio-tracking and mark-recapture estimates indicate that our efforts have succeeded in more than quadrupling the Great Meadows Blanding’s Turtle population since 2003. Although we’ve only protected and headstarted about half of all nests since 2004, more than 95% of all known juveniles in the population were headstarted. We now do similar projects with four rare turtle species at 12 different sites, also working with local partners to improve wetland and upland habitat to sustain the demographic gains.

We are proud of both the conservation successes that our projects have helped foster and that we engage about 2,500 students annually at 30 schools in learning about rare wildlife in their towns and directly helping in their conservation. The students learn that they can be agents of positive change, pushing back against the loss of local biodiversity. Our efforts, like similar ones undertaken by FWS, MassWildlife, and other New England NGOs, demonstrate that even long-term declines and local extirpations of rare species can often be reversed with sufficient knowledge and determination.

Contact: Bryan Windmiller, Zoo New England, 1 Franklin Park Rd., Boston, MA, USA, 02121 [bwindmiller@zoonewengland.org]

TURTLE SURVIVAL CENTER

Success Spurs Growth

Recent acquisitions bring new excitement

by Cris Hagen

On the evening of August 22, 2022, I was performing routine rounds and final checks on all the turtles at the Turtle Survival Center before closing for the evening. I entered Cuora Complex 2, a spacious outdoor facility featuring 90 turtle enclosures inhabited by more than 100 turtles representing four species of Cuora, the Asian box turtles. It’s also in Cuora Complex 2 that we had isolated an adult female Chinese Three-striped Box Turtle (Cuora trifasciata) laden with eggs. Based on recent radiographs, we knew she was holding five eggs; we just didn’t know when, exactly, she would lay them. When I came upon her enclosure I saw that she was quietly sitting over a hole in the corner of the habitat. Below

her rear shell, in an earthen nest chamber, were three pinkish-white eggs. She was in the process of laying what we expected to be the final nest for her species at the Center this year. The following day, when Assistant Curator Clint Doak excavated the nest, he found that all five eggs had been laid. Clint carefully brought the eggs inside, took measurements and recorded them, and placed them in an incubator with the others. It would be hours, maybe even days, before we would know if they were fertile. Sure enough, a bright white band developed around each egg, indicating fertility. Now, the young turtles, along with 13 others, are successfully developing in our incubator. They should begin hatching soon.

What’s incredible is that, in their first year residing at our Center, seven of the newly-acquired Chinese Three-striped Box Turtles laid clutches of eggs, the majority of them fertile. It is truly a testament to how incredibly adaptable, hardy, and prolific this Critically Endangered species can be, given proper care. Their reproductive success is not only important for Chinese Three-striped Box Turtles, but it also enhances Turtle Survival Alliance’s captive management program for 12 of the 13 species of Asian box turtle we maintain at our Turtle Survival Center.

Our current egg development indicates that 2022 may be the first year that the Turtle Survival Center hatches both Chinese and Vietnamese three-striped box turtles,

bringing the total number of Cuora species successfully reproducing at the Center to 11. We also initiated a genetic study on Chinese and Vietnamese three-striped box turtles with Dr. Natalia Gallego-García and Dr. Brad Shaffer at the University of California, Los Angeles, to help verify the taxonomic assignment we have determined for each individual in the collection based on their expressed characteristics. This will allow us to make more informed decisions on which turtles are the best genetically matched for captive breeding efforts.

Since the TSC’s inception in 2013, more than 800 endangered turtle eggs from 27 species and subspecies have hatched in our care. During the 2022 breeding season we have over 100 fertile eggs incubating, including significant breedings of 18 species and subspecies. These include species that are considered presumed extinct or near extinct in the wild such as Yellow-headed Box Turtle (Cuora aurocapitata), McCord’s Box Turtle (Cuora mccordi), Vietnamese Pond Turtle (Mauremys annamensis), Red-necked Pond Turtle (Mauremys nigricans), and Rote Island Snakenecked Turtle (Chelodina mccordi).

We also increased the population size and genetic diversity at the Turtle Survival Center through various significant acquisitions over the course of 2021-2022, including Vietnamese Three-striped Box Turtle, Yellow-margined Box Turtle, Pan’s Box Turtle, Southern Vietnam Box Turtle, Chinese Three-striped Box Turtle, and Flattened Musk Turtle. Other planned acquisitions in 2022 include captive bred Bourret’s Box Turtles, Vietnamese Three-striped Box Turtles, Chinese Three-striped Box Turtles, and Zhou’s Box Turtles being imported from studbook-managed populations in Europe.

With our acquisitions and continued successful captive reproduction of critically endangered chelonians at the Turtle Survival Center, the need for facilities expansion is a constant. At the time of this writing, we are proudly in the final stages of completing the new 2400 sq. ft. Assurance Colony Expansion building, giving us more capacity to raise hundreds of new offspring hatched at the Center.

Though the past year has seen many turtle newcomers, at the end of 2021 the Turtle Survival Center had to say goodbye to our long-time consulting staff veterinarian Dr. Shane Boylan from the South Carolina Aquarium. Dr. Boylan took a position at a newly built SeaWorld in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Before Shane departed, we were fortunate to recruit Dr. Katie Rainwater as our new staff veterinarian. Dr. Rainwater has worked as an exotic animal veterinarian for 14 years and, since December 2021, has been making twice-monthly visits to the Center for veterinary rounds. Turtle Survival Alliance welcomes Katie and the enthusiasm and expertise she brings.

On a final note, the Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles will be held again in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023,

From left to right: A Vietnamese Three-Striped Box Turtle acquired by the Turtle Survival Center in 2021; Seven of ten female Chinese Three-striped Box Turtles acquired by the Turtle Survival Center in 2021 laid clutches of eggs this year. This female laid the final clutch on August 22, 2022.

coinciding with the Turtle Survival Center’s 10-year anniversary. Already, plans are underway to celebrate this milestone for Turtle Survival Alliance’s only U.S.-based turtle breeding and conservation center. We hope to see everyone in Charleston in 2023!

Acknowledgments: We would like to express our gratitude to the Alan and Patricia Koval Foundation, Tim Gregory, an anonymous donor, the Felburn Foundation, Barbara B. Bonner Charitable Fund, Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, Saint Louis Zoo, David Shapiro, Moody Gardens, Inc., San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, Post and Courier Foundation, William Dennler, Michael Hasselbring, Dr. Alvin Atlas, DVM, Zoo Med Laboratories, Mazuri, Limehouse Produce, South Carolina Aquarium, and the International Primate Protection League for their generous financial and in-kind support to the operation and expansion of the Turtle Survival Center. Thank you to Clinton Doak and Carol Alvarez for their contributions to this article.

Contact: Cris Hagen, Turtle Survival Alliance, 1030 Jenkins Road, Suite D, Charleston, SC, USA 29407 [chagen@turtlesurvival.org]

Turtle Survival Center Chelonian Internship Program

The Chelonian Internship Program is perfect for undergraduate and graduate students who plan to pursue a career in conservation and captive management of turtles and tortoises and members of the United States Armed Forces transitioning to a new career after their military service.

Key Benefits:

• Gain hands-on experience with the dayto-day operations of a turtle conservation center

• Build animal care skills for captive conservation management of some of the world’s most endangered turtles and tortoises

• Obtain firsthand experience with exhibit design and construction geared towards animal care

• Develop basic veterinary care techniques as they apply to captive turtle and tortoise husbandry

• Participate in a college-level syllabus featuring structured in-class lectures, quizzes, and reading assignments

• Participate in long-term field research initiatives for turtles of the Southeastern United States

2022 Interns:

Kayla Humphries (College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA)

Lindsey Knoll (United States Air Force - Department of Defense SkillBridge Program)

Caitlin Williams (University of Bristol, Bristol, England)

Jason Wills (Kent State University, Ohio, USA)

For more information, including responsibilities, expectations, qualifications, costs, and how to apply contact Clinton Doak at cdoak@turtlesurvival.org

Teeming with Turtles

Protecting the largest known population of the Giant South American River Turtle

by Germán Forero-Medina, Camila Ferrara, Enrique Domic-Rivadeneira, and Guido Miranda

Reaching Ecovale’s field station is quite a journey. Coming from Brazil the closest airport is in the city of Cacoal, in the state of Rondônia. From there, we need to make a four-hour drive to reach the small town of Sao Francisco do Guaporé and board a boat for an hour-long ride along the Guaporé River, as it is known on the Brazilian side (in Bolivia it is known as the Iténez). Reaching the site from Bolivia is an even harder task. From Trinidad, the capital of the Department of Beni, it’s a 12hour trip by dirt road to the community of Buena Vista, on the banks of the Iténez River, plus another two and a half hours by boat.

We are visiting Ecovale, our local Brazilian NGO partner, to support their ongoing efforts to protect nesting beaches and female Giant South American River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa) near the Bolivia-Brazil border, in the heart of the Amazon. The work of Ecovale is led by Zeca

Lula, a driven and passionate man who has been dedicated to this job for more than two decades. In 1999, Lula started an NGO with some partners with the purpose of protecting the Giant South American River Turtle and its habitats. In 2003, he was hired by the Rondônia State Secretary of Environmental Development to work exclusively on turtle protection. Since then, he spends part of the year at the field station by the Guaporé River, where he coordinates a team to protect the nesting turtles that begin to emerge on beaches in July as the river dries.

On the Bolivian side of the river, protection for the turtles and their nesting areas is less evident; no guards or rangers actively patrol the area due to a lack of resources. Furthermore, in the past, the local community was more involved in the turtle’s protection. Sadly, nowadays, almost no one from the Bolivian side is actively involved in turtle conservation. In the past it was teacher Lola Salvatierra

Giant South American River Turtles nest en masse on a Guaporé/Itenez River beach along the Bolivia-Brazil border.

from the nearby settlement of Versalles who led campaigns for protecting the species and to ensure a source of protein for future generations. For peoples of the Orinoco Basin and Amazonia, Giant South American River Turtles have for thousands of years been an important source of food. “By caring for turtles we protect all species—fish, plants, even our forests and our territory. Our illusion was that if we took care of them, in two or three years there would be enough turtles for our children to eat,” said professor Lola while we visited her house to hear about the turtle and the work on the Bolivian side of the river.

While these efforts have been led by local leaders like Zeca Lula and teacher Lola, in recent years they have both struggled to sustain the activities. They have received little help from governmental institutions, and limited funding has caused protection to be reduced or even absent in some years. In 2019, we (a Wildlife Conservation Society/Turtle Survival Alliance team) began supporting this initiative to strengthen conservation teams on both sides of the border. Then, beginning in early 2020, COVID-19 partially paralyzed human travel and interaction for the better part of two years. Now we are resuming active involvement, visiting

Lula at Ecovale´s field camp to discuss the project, support conservation actions, and to begin developing a standardized method to estimate the population of nesting females in the Guaporé/Itenez River. To do this we are using drones, thermal cameras, and other technologies like Artificial Intelligence.

The importance of this site was clear to the turtle conservation and academic community after a Turtle Conservation Fund supported workshop we conducted in 2014, where we brought together conservationists working with Giant South American River Turtles in six countries. We also gathered information on the number of nesting females at each site to understand the abundance and trends of the species across the Amazon and Orinoco basins. The results revealed the Guaporé/Itenez population is the largest known of the species. Rough estimates at the time indicated that more than 30,000 females nested in the area, but recent data suggests this number could be higher than 70,000. Estimating the number of nesting females in an accurate way is essential to understand the magnitude of this incredible population and to develop standardized methods to monitor its trends across time. That is why this year, as

Camila Ferrara/WCS

a team from WCS Bolivia, WCS Brazil, and Turtle Survival Alliance, we are here to work with Zeca Lula and his team.

We arrived with Zeca at the camp at night and the Bolivian team was already there waiting for us. After a beer to quench our thirst, we planned the next day’s work and logistics. We would spend our nights on the beaches, counting turtles through multiple methods, including drones (thermal camera), visual counting, and mark recapture by painting turtle´s carapaces.

The following morning, we left the camp and arrived at the nesting beaches at 4:00 AM. What we saw is difficult to describe. The whole beach, which is roughly the size of ten soccer fields, was completely covered by nesting turtles. The heart of the nesting area was darker than the night, we couldn’t see the sand, and we could hear excavating sounds and shells bumping into each other as turtles looked for a place to nest. This is what explorer Alexander von Humboldt described in his early narratives of the Amazon and Orinoco. This is what mass nesting looked like centuries ago, and can only be seen in a few places today. If people are amazed by incredible animal gatherings like the great Serengeti Wildebeest migration, overwintering Monarch

From left to right: Space is limited as thousands of Giant South American River Turtles vie for optimal nesting sites; Drones are one of the tools used to estimate the size of the region’s Giant South American River Turtle population by recording aerial imagery of nesting females.

butterflies in south-central Mexico, or Mobula Ray migration in the Sea of Cortez, this nesting of the Giant South American River Turtle is one of those incredible wonders of nature, perhaps the largest gathering of river turtles in the world.

For ten days, we flew drones, worked hand-in-hand with Zeca, and discussed the needs of the project from both sides of the border. The drone technology seems promising and we were able to make some initial counts of the nesting turtles. In one single night, there could be more than 4,000 turtles nesting on the beach. The thermal camera allows identifying nesting turtles at night, where they concentrate the most. There are some things to adjust and correct, so next year we’ll bring an even larger group, adding expertise and technology to improve the drone assessments. The conservation efforts this year were successful, with no turtles extracted by poachers, and participation of local news and institutions to highlight the importance of this site. However, given the large number of turtles, and the ease of capturing them for the food trade, conservation efforts will be needed permanently, which makes funding challenging in the long term. One option contemplated is the creation of a protected area of some kind, which could have permanent support by Brazilian and Bolivian governments, to provide permanent and long-term protection for this important stronghold for the species.

As we said goodbye to Zeca and his team, we knew there was more work to come and that we would be returning to this site, hopefully bringing new people, new supporters, and new ideas to continue his wonderful work to protect South America’s largest freshwater turtle.

Acknowledgments: We kindly thank Andrea Batista, Ecovale, Wildlife Conservation Society, Turtle Survival Alliance, and Walter Sedgwick for their contributions and support to this work.

Contact: Germán Forero-Medina, Turtle Survival Alliance, Wildlife Conservation Society, Cali, Colombia [gforero@wcs.org], Camila Ferrara, WCS Brazil, Rua Dos Marupás, 67. Conj. Acariquara. Coroado., Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil 69082-674 [cferrara@wcs.org]

Salt Life

Team Terrapin continues long-term monitoring

by Tabitha Hootman

Let’s cut to the chase: I love terrapins, but I was not always good at finding them. In fact, I wasn’t just bad, I was worse than bad, or so I thought. For a while, I wondered if I could ever find a crawl—the track left by a terrapin atop sand, silt, or mud as it makes its way to and from its brackish-water home to higher ground. Now I am fairly proficient, but if the turtle makes it over the beach wrack and into the high grass, or walks over oyster shell hash fragments, forget about it. Then, I feel like a novice all over again.

Now, let me rewind to the part about loving terrapins. There was a catalytic moment when I knew I loved these iconic brackish-water dwelling turtles. It was during the first scientific survey on which I assisted, on a small barrier island in northeast Florida. Dr. Joseph “Joe” Butler of the University of North Florida discovered a nesting population of Carolina Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin centrata) in the mid to late 1990s on a semi-remote island in northeast Florida and began studying them. It was there, in 2005, that fellow University of North Florida

undergraduate Candice Cox and I accompanied then Master of Science student Eric Munscher—now Director of Turtle Survival Alliance’s North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group (NAFTRG)—as he performed nest locating and data retrieval of as part of his thesis study. On that first day it felt like Eric was a true master at identifying terrapin crawls and finding nests. Upon finding my first nest, I was attached forever to the species.

The first live terrapin I saw was about a week later, an adult female in the process of nesting. We watched as she completed the diligent process of covering and masking her nest, then scooped her up to retrieve data before she could disappear. She was like no turtle I had ever encountered. Her eyes were a beautiful teal, the markings that adorned her shell were simply amazing, and she possessed a calm demeanor and personality that just sucked me in. I was hooked. And then I saw hatchlings and they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

Now, more than 15 years later, I enjoy teaching others the art and science of terrapin crawl locating and tracking, nest detection, data retrieval, and terrapin natural history. And, I get to do so as lead of NAFTRG’s North Florida program.

This spring our citizen-science group partnered with Florida State Parks to include the very project that got me hooked. In 2009, Dr. Butler’s research project transferred to the Florida State Parks system under the supervision of Parks Services Specialist Allison Conboy. Now, she and I have taken the helm of this long-term initiative. We call the project participants Team Terrapin

Shane Smith

When I started in 2005, we had only five people on our crew. Now we have approximately 30 volunteers. They work in teams of two to three as they canvas the beach daily from the beginning of April through the end of September, looking for adult and hatchling turtle crawls and nests and recording data.

Fieldwork typically begins at daybreak. The team meets, gathers supplies, and loads them in backpacks. Then, with kayaks, lifejackets, and paddles loaded on carts they head for the boat launch. It’s a beautiful paddle out to the island, which boasts a thick, quiet salt marsh on one side and white sand beaches on the other. We haul the kayaks out of reach of the day’s high tide, shoulder our packs, and begin our daily treasure hunt.

Early in the season, we look for adult female crawls so that we may follow them to their nests. Once we confirm an intact nest, we mark its location and monitor it over several months to determine its fate. As the research season transitions from early (April/May) to mid-season (June/July), activity ramps up. It’s at this time that we begin to see hatched nests and hatchlings appear while new nests continue to be deposited. By August, nesting slows down, after which we continue to search for hatched nests until October.

This season, Team Terrapin worked hard and we greatly exceeded previous records cataloguing 34 live adult females and identified 888 separate nests. Sadly, over 70% of the nests were preyed upon by raccoons and armadillos, and, to a lesser extent, crows, fire ants, and ghost crabs. The biggest threat at our site is predation, which most of-

ten occurs within 72 hours of egg laying. Hatchlings are also depredated as they emerge. It’s a tough life for terrapin eggs and hatchlings. Only a fraction will make it to the relative safety of the salt marsh, and only a fraction of those will survive their first year. But, with sustained and intensified monitoring and predator deterrence during the incubation and hatching stage, we hope to increase the number of young terrapins that survive the gauntlet to adulthood.

The team’s dedication to research and conservation has been instrumental in providing data used by the state’s environmental agencies to protect Diamondback Terrapins at our study site and other Florida beaches. I am proud to lead such a dedicated and passionate group of people making a difference for the species at the very place that 17 years ago one first captured my heart.

Acknowledgments: We thank the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the Friends of Talbot Islands State Parks for their support.

Contact: Tabitha Hootman, Turtle Survival Alliance, 1030 Jenkins Road, Suite D, Charleston, SC 29407 [thootman@turtlesurvival.org]

In 2022, Turtle Survival Alliance-North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group partnered with Florida State Parks to include Carolina Diamondback Terrapin nest monitoring and population surveys to our initiatives in Florida.

Private Lands, Public Benefits

A partnership for southern Bog Turtles

by Mike Knoerr and JJ Apodaca

Mark Twain once wrote “Too thick to drink and too thin to plow” in reference to the Missouri River. This saying is equally as relevant, both historically and today, to how many farmers in the Southern Appalachia view Mountain Bogs. They are too dry for bass and ducks, but too wet for hay and corn. Why have “a swamp” when you can have a pond or a field? In short, Mountain Bogs do not have much use in the eyes of many producers, and these are folks who put a lot of value in utility. As a result, these wetlands, and the unique ecological communities they support have, by and large, disappeared from the landscape. The very nature of the shy Bog Turtle (Glyptemys muhlenbergii) means that their existence and beauty is often unknown to the landowner with the trackhoe, and their losses have been a silent one. Unfortunately, mountain wetlands continue to be lost

every year. Limited legal recourse under the Endangered Species Act, significant agricultural exemptions under the Clean Water Act, and limited oversight mean that “the stick” approach has not been especially effective. If these wetlands are truly the ecological gems we claim them to be, we need to successfully communicate their value to landowners. We also need to offer more to them than, “These turtles are special. Please leave their habitat alone.” We need to provide incentives to conserve them. It needs to make more sense to protect Bog Turtles than not to.

Recovering southern Bog Turtles requires a systematic education and outreach effort on private lands. This work starts by figuring out where conservation efforts will have the most meaningful impact. The problem is that we have an incomplete understanding of where southern Bog Turtles still exist and how many we have left. Excitingly, several

Mike Knoerr

agency and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners have just received a Competitive State Wildlife Grant (C-SWG; United States Fish & Wildlife Service) to evaluate the status and distribution of southern Bog Turtles in Virginia and North Carolina (the two states that contain over 90% of the Bog Turtle sites in the South). We will leverage multiple approaches to do this work, including camera traps and environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys, the rapid assessment techniques developed recently which were evaluated in 2021 via the Bern Tryon Southern Bog Turtle Fund (Turtle Survival Alliance/Zoo Knoxville). Using the newly collected data, models will be developed that prioritize conservation efforts around key Bog Turtle metapopulations as well as identify conservation issues and opportunities.

The second part of our task is to protect, restore, and manage habitat for Bog Turtles. This is why the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy (ARC) recently submitted a massive proposal to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) to recover Bog Turtles on agricultural lands in Virginia and North Carolina. Twenty-four agencies and NGO’s have agreed to implement this good work. If funded, we will be able to hire knowledgeable and passionate biologists who will reach these landowners and change the views of a community one person at a time. Most importantly, we will have unprecedented funds to pay farmers for land easements as well as cover the cost of restoration and management of these early successional wetlands. These forever easements will protect wetlands, wetland buffers, and critical habitat corridors identified via the C-SWG.

Restoration and management of critical habitat will be implemented via a suite of conservation practices that benefit Bog Turtles including: wetland creation and restoration (which creates shallowly inundated areas by plugging ditches, destroying tile drains, etc.), brush management and herbaceous weed control, watering systems and fencing that support prescribed grazing (managing the harvest of vegetation with grazing and/or browsing animals, such as cows or goats), etc. For the most critical Bog Turtle sites, we will also offer cash incentives to get a landowner under contract. Whether this specific proposal is funded this year or not, we have made significant strides in getting commitments from regional partners to protect Bog Turtles and their habitat. We have momentum.

It is important to recognize and celebrate the many conservation successes that our southern Bog Turtle partners have had recently, particularly in protecting and managing several of our last best Bog Turtle populations. But like many conservation efforts, it’s been a bit of a “whacka-mole” approach that lacks the scale required to secure a future for the species in more than a handful of isolated places. Our goal is to create stable, abundant, and recruiting Bog Turtle metapopulations connected via intact wetland complexes in the South. This cannot and will not occur

Clockwise from left: An adult Bog Turtle sits amongst vegetation typical of its preferred habitat; A common sight; A landowner’s trackhoe left adjacent to a wetland that was recently ditched and ponded in 2022. This site was not known to contain Bog Turtles, but may have been used as a “stepping stone” between occupied sites. A mosaic of intact wetlands and protected corridors across the landscape are required for many Bog Turtle populations to remain stable; Part of our conservation efforts are to protect and monitor naturally occurring nests and hatchlings.

everywhere. But there are places where major conservation opportunities exist. We are working on the road map today to identify and capitalize on those opportunities. Call us optimists, but we believe that in ten years we will have more Bog Turtles wandering the root systems of alders in pursuit of slugs than we do today.

Acknowledgments: Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, Natural Resources Conservation Service, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, The Nature Conservancy, Turtle Survival Alliance, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Zoo Knoxville.

Contact: Mike Knoerr, Conservation Management Institute at Virginia Tech, and Tangled Bank Conservation, 56 Clayton St., Asheville, NC, 28801 [mknoerr@vt.edu]; JJ Apodaca, Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, and Tangled Bank Conservation, 56 Clayton St., Asheville, NC, 28801 [jj@tbconservation.org]

DALTON STATE

Master of Turtle Science

Georgia collegiate chelonian program strives for excellence

by Christopher Manis

“How about a hands-on conservation project with imperiled turtles?” That’s how it started, a simple suggestion among colleagues over beers. Our Dean had requested suggestions to get STEM projects up and running in the newly constructed Peeples Hall only a few days earlier. It was Fall 2013, and the new science building at Dalton State College (DSC), replete with laboratory space and equipment, would officially open spring semester of 2014. I had been mulling the idea privately for days, and my colleagues agreed it could be a great project. The two primary goals of the project would be simple but far-reaching: 1. Engage students with a hands-on conservation project that would excite them, and 2. Contribute to conservation efforts for chelonians.

I verbally pitched the project, and the response was, “What do you need to get started?” A whirlwind of events occurred in short order. We held conferences with Bill Hughes, Herpetology Coordinator at the Tennessee Aquarium, to thoughtfully choose species of chelonians with which to work. A space designed as a wet field lab in Peeples Hall was outfitted with enclosure space and lighting. The room would be the headquarters for the DSC Turtle Assurance Colony (TAC) Project. One senior biology student began caring for three male and three female Spiny Turtles (Heosemys spinosa) during Fall 2013. That same student welcomed visitors to the TAC project when the building officially opened in Spring 2014.

Growth of the TAC accelerated and student interest pushed the project to expand. Dalton State College and the surrounding community responded, and we planned a new tropical greenhouse. In April 2018, we toured the Turtle Survival Alliance’s Turtle Survival Center in South Carolina and met with Director Cris Hagen to discuss designs. DSC finished the greenhouse in Fall 2018, along with some outdoor paddocks, and we began adding and acclimating animals over the following months. Within a year, we built an ark colony of imperiled chelonians that we felt we could educate our students with and bring awareness to their conservation needs. The species list has remained stable over the past four years and includes

examples from genera including Kinixys (hinge-back tortoises), Indotestudo (Asian forest tortoises), Cuora (Asian box turtles), Sacalia (eyed turtles), Heosemys (Asian freshwater and forest turtles), Geochelone (star tortoises), and Manouria (Asian large forest tortoises). In 2020, we began participating in the Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program with the Tennessee Aquarium as a partner and added Spotted Turtles (Clemmys guttata) and Wood Turtles (Glyptemys insculpta).

The remarkable growth of this project is relative to the positive impacts on the students. The support needed to maintain this project is substantial regarding human resources and funding. The DSC STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) department continually invests in the TAC and is supplemented with private donations from the local community and chelonian conservation groups. The students supply the human capital needed to drive the TAC with input from faculty and staff.

From left to right: Arakan Forest Turtles, a Critically Endangered species from Southeast Asia, are a favorite species for students to work with; Student Technician Logan Pavlik performs a health check on a female Home’s Hinge-back Tortoise.

At any given time, approximately 25 students participate in the TAC or SAFE programs. It is a volunteer staff and ranges from first-year students to graduating seniors. There are many opportunities for students to develop the soft professional skills that employers and graduate schools value. The program is flexible by design and allows students to work with different taxa and varying life stages of animals. It also permits students to perform tasks during the flow of their academic loads on campus, often caring for the animals during breaks between classes and labs. Students complete all husbandry assignments needed for the colony, including food preparation, health checks, environmental maintenance, and greenhouse duties. The project relies on peer leadership and students are required to actively communicate within taxa care groups. They take personal responsibility for husbandry tasks, and the project is a safe place for students that need reassurance to ask questions. Students often take on more responsibility as they gain confidence in their skill set, expanding into other project areas. Students can earn Service-Learning credit by participating in the TAC or SAFE projects. In addition to their duties caring for turtles and tortoises, students often lead education and outreach efforts and guided tours for campus visitors interested in the projects.

Now, we are eight years into the project and students are still meeting the original goals of the TAC. The animals are well managed and the students are gaining valuable knowledge. Reference letters citing the students’ experiences inside the TAC follow them into career paths that range from physical therapy to conservation biology. Many of our students transition their TAC/SAFE experiences into paid internships, graduate programs, field studies, and other career opportunities. The animals inside the TAC have benefited from the excellent care the students provide. Numerous species have reproduced, including Home’s Hinge-back Tortoises (Kinixys homeana), Forest Hinge-back Tortoises (Kinixys erosa), Elongated Tortoises (Indotestudo elongata), Forsten’s Tortoises (Indotestudo forstenii), Beale’s Eyed Turtle (Sacalia bealei), and Southeast Asian Box Turtles (Cuora amboinensis). There is a new greenhouse on the horizon that will serve temperate species of chelonians and increase the diversity of the TAC. Growing faculty and staff involvement is attracting more students too.

Contact: Christopher Manis, Dalton State College, Georgia, USA 30720 [cmanis2@daltonstate.edu]

Students Conserving Nature

Building conservation capacity in the Yucatán

by Alejandra Monsiváis and Taggert Butterfield

As the plane approaches the Mérida International Airport, in Yucatán, Mexico, the peninsula emerges from the clouds as an infinite green pancake. In whichever direction you look, all you can see is a thick carpet of tropical semi-deciduous forest. After landing and driving down to our field site, the peninsula takes on new shapes. Small hills are spread throughout the landscape and make the journey less monotonous. The road to our destination is a tourist route where people can visit ancient Mayan cities and natural formations like cenotes, sinkholes in the limestone bedrock, and caves. If you visit

archeological sites, you’ll learn that the Maya civilization vanished hundreds of years ago. However, the Maya culture is still alive. More than half a million Mayan speakers live across the Yucatán Peninsula and preserve many of the traditions and beliefs of their ancestors.

Here in southeast Mexico our organization Estudiantes Conservando la Naturaleza (ECN, Students Conserving Nature) studies three species of turtle: The Yucatán Box Turtle (Terrapene yucatana), Furrowed Wood Turtle (Rhinoclemmys areolata), and Creaser’s Mud Turtle (Kinosternon creaseri). The entirety of our drive from the airport to our destination lies within the distribution of all three species. Our field sites, though, are patches of forest surrounding a small Maya community comprising a dozen houses 140 kilometers (87 miles) south of the state capital of Mérida. People in this community, as in most rural communities in Yucatán state, are extremely marginalized. Not only do residents lack basic services, such as sanitation and garbage collection, but jobs are scarce, temporary, and poorly paid. José and Alberto, the first two students that were part of the ECN Scholarship Program in Yucatán, live in this community, as does Mario, the local leader who oversees the program and carries out most of the monitoring activities.

Students Conserving Nature offers monthly scholarships to middle and high school students living in underserved communities, providing them the opportunity to participate in scientific research. The aim of the scholarship is to support their studies, with the ultimate goal that the students will learn valuable life skills to help them pursue a future career. Students help the local leader survey turtle populations throughout the year while completing other assignments designed to help them improve computer or reading skills. A similar scholarship program was first established in Sonora in 2019 and, thanks to our current partnership with Turtle Survival Alliance, we were able to expand it to the state of Yucatán in October 2021.

We are warmly received by our local project leader, Mario, and his family upon our arrival to the community. The last time we were here was in October, when we first came to launch the scholarship program. It’s been a few months since then, so we spend our first afternoon visiting friends and catching up on local news. In the evening we sit around a stone stove where dinner is being prepared, planning with Mario the workdays ahead. Our visit to the community has several objectives: we want to make sure the scholarship program is running smoothly, help with surveys, and check on the turtles that we equipped with radio transmitters last fall.

At present, the team is radio-tracking three Yucatán Box Turtles, two Furrowed Wood Turtles, and six Creaser’s Mud Turtles. Since equipping these individuals with transmitters, they have begun to show us what it’s like to live in environments subjected to pressures from human activ-

Alejandra Monsiváis

ities. For example, the Furrowed Wood Turtle visits corn crops to feed on fallen corn cobs, and one individual managed to escape a small-scale fire by walking over two kilometers (1.2 miles) to a patch of secondary forest that has regrown after it was previously cleared.

After checking the turtles with transmitters, we help Mario and the students conduct surveys in the forest near their community to search for new turtles, especially Yucatán Box Turtles. In recent months, Mario and the students have found juvenile and adult Furrowed Wood Turtles and Creaser’s Mud Turtles, but just a few adult Yucatán Box Turtles. Yucatán Box Turtles are rare, and they are targeted by local people for medicine and food and by poachers who sell them in the black market animal trade. For this reason, our organization will begin a special project in 2023 to identify key areas where there are stable populations of this species near our field site and other parts of the Yucatán Peninsula.

Fieldwork days go by quickly and it is soon time to say

goodbye. We are very pleased to see that José and Alberto have improved their equipment and data collection skills, and that their enthusiasm for the work remains intact. We didn’t find any new box turtles on this trip, but we did identify new areas where the team can begin to expand our surveys. We fly back home, knowing that this is just the beginning, thrilled for all that we will learn about these understudied species of turtle of the Yucatán Peninsula and, of course, thrilled for the local students whom we will watch grow and succeed in their scholarship roles.

Acknowledgments: This work is funded by Turtle Survival Alliance and the Division of International Conservation, United States Fish & Wildlife Service. We sincerely thank Tim Gregory, Andrew Walde, John Iverson, and Jordan Gray for their support.

Contact: Alejandra Monsiváis and Taggert Butterfield, Students Conserving Nature [info@studentsconservingnature.org]

Clockwise from left: José, one of the scholarship students, holds a juvenile Creaser’s Mud Turtle after taking it out of a hoop trap; Yucatán Box Turtles, like this male, are a focal species for Students Conserving Nature in the state of Yucatán; Students Conserving Nature carries out a visual encounter survey in a patch of forest in Yucatán; Scholarship students, José and Alberto, sort individual Creaser’s Mud Turtles by size.

A Watershed Moment

ican River Turtles never float on top of the water and this one appeared to be climbing out. My reply was, “Whoa! Are the turtles mating?!” Tom’s proud voice message response was, “Correct!” He continued to describe the specific details of the sighting, which was the first-ever documentation of mating behavior at the HCRC.

Conservation action for the Central American River Turtle

by Heather Barrett

On the morning of October 28, I received a message from Hicatee Conservation and Research Center (HCRC) manager, Thomas Pop. The text read “Heather – talk to me about that picture,” and included a photo of a male Central American River Turtle (Dermatemys mawii), locally called Hicatee, in one of the breeding ponds.

Texts like this are not unusual for me. I work at the BFREE biological field station in the rainforest of southern Belize and there is always something beautiful or spectacular to photograph. My co-workers love to send pictures as evidence of their latest encounter. I get everything from enviable wildlife sightings to predation events, to gorgeous blooming plants, to floods.

I inspected the picture more closely. Male Central Amer-

Two months later, in a similar moment of discovery, Jonathan Dubon, BFREE’s Wildlife Fellow, documented a female Central American River Turtle exiting a breeding pond to nest. Jonathan lay on the ground just feet from her and quietly recorded video and took photos while she slowly dug a hole and then carefully placed each of eleven eggs—laying them one by one.

At the HCRC, we’ve learned that discovery and progress take patience and perseverance. In the early days, we placed camera traps in strategic locations all around the ponds to capture courting, mating, or nesting activity. Despite our diligent efforts, we came up empty-handed. Yet on two random days in late 2021, Tom and Jonathan were each in the exact right place at the exact right time. While simply fulfilling their normal morning responsibilities, they became witnesses and documentarians of important behaviors.

The HCRC is just one piece of a larger conservation strategy for the Central American River Turtle. Because reproduction has been successful here, this pushes us and our partners toward associated and concurrent actions. We are

Heather Barrett; Anthony Grate

From left to right: BFREE’s newest Wildlife Fellow, Barney Hall, joins Team Hicatee during the May release of captive-born turtles; Although Central American River Turtles have produced hundreds of hatchlings at the HCRC, this image is the first visual documentation of mating behavior there; Ed Boles, Barney Hall, Thomas Pop, and Jonathan Dubon released 129 one and two-year-old Central American River Turtles into a river in central Belize during the third rewilding event of 2022.

producing hundreds of hatchlings annually. Therefore, we are implementing research studies to ensure that turtles are healthy and appropriate for release.

Bi-annual health assessments provide the venue for experts to come together to perform many of these studies. Some include pathology to determine that captive bred turtles won’t introduce new bacteria or disease into wild populations; laparoscopies to ensure we are producing, through temperature-dependent sex determination, an equal number of male and female turtles for release; genetic analysis to determine paternity of captive animals as well as identify appropriate wild populations to supplement. Some of these studies have led to modifications in our husbandry protocols to help us reach the desired end goals, while others help to validate our husbandry choices.

Research on wild populations is equally important and continues with teams from Missouri State University who are collecting data on the turtle’s daily and seasonal activity patterns as well as the turtle’s habitat preference. More recently, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) began monitoring the Central American River Turtle population at the newly acquired Hicatee reserve – Cox Lagoon.

As part of the conservation program, Turtle Survival Alliance and BFREE hired Dr. Ed Boles in February 2022 as the first Dermatemys Program Coordinator. He is tasked with bringing together stakeholders to create a Conservation Action Plan for the Central American River Turtle. To that end, he coordinated the Third Hicatee Conservation Workshop online on May 17th. Facilitated by Yvette Alonzo, with technical assistance from David Hedrick of Turtle Survival Alliance, the workshop was attended by 38 professionals supporting Central American River Turtle research, conservation, and outreach, as well as key government officials from the Belize Fisheries Department.

Results of the workshop included a 33-page transcript capturing input from participants, which will serve as a guiding document for compiling the first draft of a species recovery plan in Belize. A follow-up workshop to review the draft will take place later in 2022. If successful in this country, the content will be exported as guidance in similar plans for Mexico and Guatemala.

Jacob Marlin, Executive Director of BFREE states, “After many years of the hard work and sustained efforts of so many committed individuals and organizations, the Central American River Turtle program in Belize has reached an exciting and transformational stage. The many pieces needed to advance the scale and scope of the project are

coming together to have a meaningful and lasting impact on the conservation of the species.”

Acknowledgments: Generous support was provided by Alan & Patricia Koval Foundation, Belize Fisheries Department, Belize Wildlife and Referral Clinic, Birmingham Zoo, David Hutchinson, Dennler Family Fund, Government of Belize, Mazuri Exotic Animal Nutrition, Tim Gregory, Turtle Ecology Lab, Turtle Survival Alliance, Zoo New England, and anonymous donors. Thank you to Jacob Marlin and Ed Boles for their contributions to this article.

Contact: Heather Barrett, Belize Foundation for Research and Environmental Education (BFREE), 3520 NW 43rd Street, Gainesville, FL 32606 [hbarrett@bfreebz.org]

Cox Lagoon

A Newly Established Protected Area for the Central American River Turtle

Located in the heart of the Maya Forest Corridor in central Belize lies Cox Lagoon, a five-kilometer-long freshwater lagoon surrounded by a mosaic of tropical forest and savannah ecosystems. Cox is well known for its abundance of wildlife, including a population of the Central American River Turtle. In 2021, several international conservation organizations, including Turtle Survival Alliance, Rainforest Trust, Re:wild, and Wildlife Conservation Society, came together to acquire 30,000 acres (>12,000 ha) of forest, including Cox Lagoon. It is an ideal site for the long-term conservation of the Central American River Turtle as both a source population and potentially a release site for headstarted turtles, as the lagoon connects to the Belize River. It is the largest watershed in Belize and home to a historically robust population of this Critically Endangered species. Turtle Survival Alliance, with support from an anonymous donor, contributed $1M towards this purchase.

Turtle Matchmakers

Using advanced conservation genetics to save Dahl´s Toad-headed Turtle

by Igor Valencia, Germán Forero-Medina and Natalia Gallego-García

It’s a new day in the La Carranchina Natural Reserve. Rain is pouring down and the newly created ponds are filled to their brims with water. Thousands of native trees and shrubs we’ve planted here are now well irrigated, too. The hope of recovering a beautiful, unique, and endemic Colombian turtle species wells up in the hearts of the team.

Our goal is to help recover populations of Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle (Mesoclemmys dahli), a species found only in Colombia. This species is threatened by habitat loss and, as a result, the silent menace of inbreeding. Based on our team’s research, led by Dr. Natalia Gallego-García, we know that land cover changes have fragmented this species into small, isolated populations, leading to increased mating amongst relatives and low levels of genetic diversity. If gene flow is not restored, genetic deterioration will further drive this species to the brink of extinction. Because habitat restoration in and of itself will take too long for natural gene flow to occur, we are implementing a Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle genetic rescue program to prevent genetic isolation from continuing its detrimental impact to the turtle’s population. This program involves translocating animals from other localities into the reserve,

where a local population of this species resides, to reduce inbreeding and increase genetic diversity. This is the first program of its kind for a turtle species in Colombia.

In April 2022 we embarked on a quest, accompanied by Nilson Caraballo and Jair Bonilla from the community of Bajo Limón. The two have unmatched skills when it comes to finding Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtles, having now worked with us for more than six years monitoring a population of this cryptic species. With the team assembled and our permits in hand, we visited several rural towns in the municipality of Lorica, Córdoba Department. We identified this area through our previous range-wide genetic characterization as having turtles with the best-matched genes with those at La Carranchina Natural Reserve. Technically speaking, the turtles in Lorica are the most genetically different from the turtles in the Reserve, but are adaptively compatible because they inhabit similar environments. With this strategy, we expect to increase genetic diversity and reduce inbreeding without incurring a high risk of maladaptation (failure to adjust adequately or appropriately to the environment or situation). After 15 days of searching, we secured 18 individuals from our selected donor population.

On April 17th, with crates full of genetically important turtles, we embarked on a three-hour drive to the Reserve, a 120-hectare (297-acre) property in San Benito Abad (Sucre Department), which we established in 2019. The Reserve itself appears as a lush oasis, markedly in contrast with its surroundings, due to the pervasive conversion of native tropical dry forest to agriculture and livestock pastureland. The Reserve’s upland now features a recovering tropical dry forest resulting from the intensive efforts of our restoration team. The team includes members of the adjacent community of Flechas, such as Yeiner Vega, Donys Machego, and a group of women who work in the greenhouse, and is led by restoration expert, Selene Torres. Together, the team has planted more than 7,000 seedlings and saplings of native trees and other plants to restore habitat for Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle and other species, such as the Red-footed Tortoise (Chelonoidis carbonarius), that also occur there.

Upon arrival, we affixed VHF transmitter devices to the translocated turtles’ shells, collected blood samples from each of them for future genetic analysis, and released them into the newly created ponds. We built these ponds with the dual intention of creating additional habitat to accommodate translocated turtles and to expand the already existing aquatic habitat that features a stream and vegetated wetlands where the resident turtles live.

Today, we are releasing the 18 translocated turtles from Lorica into the ponds, matching them with local turtles:

translocated females with local males in some ponds and translocated males with local females in others. We now hope that all the new turtles settle in the reserve, survive, and mate with local partners. If successful, our efforts here will reduce inbreeding, increase the Reserve’s turtle population size, and improve the future for the species.

We’ve rolled the dice. We see the emotion in the eyes of the group as we all observe the ponds full of turtles. As our month in the field comes to an end, we say our goodbyes to Jair, Nilson, and Yeiner, and to Donny Manchego our Reserve ranger, who in our absence will watch over these turtles as if they were his own children. As we say goodbye to them, we see in their faces pride for helping with this incredible task. We return home, but our minds are still on those ponds, in those turtles, and in the dreams of saving a species.

Acknowledgments: We kindly thank Tim Gregory, Wildlife Conservation Society, Turtle Survival Alliance, Fundación Santo Domingo, and Trillion Trees for their contributions to and support of this work.

Contact: Germán Forero-Medina and Igor Valencia, Turtle Survival Alliance, Wildlife Conservation Society, Cali, Colombia [gforero@ wcs.org; ivalencia@wcs.org]; Natalia Gallego-García, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 610 Charles E. Young Drive East, Box 957239, University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA 90095 [natagalle@gmail.com]

From left to right: The turtles are ready to take a three-hour trip to their new home, the La Carranchina Natural Reserve, as part of the genetic rescue program; Germán Forero-Medina takes blood samples and affixes transmitters on the turtles before releasing them; A translocated Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle takes in the surroundings of its new home at the Reserve.

Return to the Wild

Tracking rewilded Radiated Tortoises

by Brett Bartek

The only thing going through our heads while we were stranded in that small village, sheltering in the shade from the brutal sun, was “at least we’re finally here.” One of the trucks in our team’s caravan had broken down while traveling from the Tortoise Conservation Center (TCC) to the forest in which 1,000 subadult Radiated Tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) had been transferred to a six-hectare (15-acre) pre-release pen eight months ago. This historic release has been in the works for over two years and has been postponed for much of that time due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, making us wonder if this project would ever be possible. But we were finally there ready to get to work—as long as the team could get the truck up and running again.

Over the last week Herilala, Lance, Tantely, and I have spent our time traveling to the TCC, located in the aptly named spiny forest of southern Madagascar. There, we met up with the rest of our team and began teaching them skills they would need to follow tortoises around the forest for the next two years following their release. During our time at the TCC we truly witnessed the scale of the problem Turtle Survival Alliance Madagascar staff have been facing. The TCC is a walled compound, built within native forest, separated into several pens housing more than 10,000 Radiated Tortoises rescued from illegal trade. Turtle Survival Alliance’s main goal in Madagascar has been to combat poaching and care for the tortoises confiscated from trafficking. This has left little time to locate proper protected areas into which these tortoises can be safely released. With the number of tortoises under Turtle Survival Alliance’s care reaching well over 26,000 (and rising) it is time to start finding safe havens for these tortoises, working with the communities there to ensure long term protection and release these animals back into their native range.

To begin to accomplish this goal, Lance and I spent the first two days at the TCC training the staff on how to use radio telemetry equipment to find tortoises and how to collect temperature and location data with a handheld GPS. Everyone involved in the project took turns hiding our mock transmittered tortoise (a flip-flop sandal) around the compound. This group of grown men were competitive and, although there was a large language barrier between us, the constant laughter and smiling made me think that they were having just as much fun as I was.

Soon enough we were all piling into a pair of pickup trucks preparing for what was supposed to be a three-hour

Madagascar’s iconic Radiated Tortoise is the focus of a largescale reintroduction program, which saw the return of 1,000 tortoises to their native habitat in 2021-2022, with another 4,000 scheduled for release by mid-2023.

Lance Paden

Clockwise from left: Vontsoa records the shell temperature of a rewilded Radiated Tortoise equipped with a radio transmitter and GPS data logger; Turtle Survival Alliance biologists and community members gather at the recently constructed field station adjacent to the tortoise release site; Lance, Tantely, Herilala, and Tahina place a temporary number on the shell of a rewilded Radiated Tortoise.

Lance Paden; Brett Bartek

drive to the forest, where we would spend the next two weeks putting our teammates’ new skills to the test. This, of course, is where one of the trucks broke down—turning our three-hour drive into eight hours. We waited while a team with the second truck returned to the TCC to scavenge parts before rejoining us—to fix the broken truck on the side of the road with a chisel and sledge hammer.

After our long journey, we piqued the attention of the entire village. They watched with curiosity as we unpacked all of our gear into the small concrete field station that Turtle Survival Alliance had built there a year before. There were a few brief introductions among us and the village elders who watch over the forest; then we finally were able to eat dinner and go to bed. The next morning, we were greeted by smiling, curious faces as we left to find our newfound friends with whom we would be spending the next two weeks. After a delicious breakfast of rice and scrambled eggs, we began our work with the help of several of the local forest guardians.

It was about three kilometers (nearly two miles) from the center of the village to the six-hectare pen in which the 1,000 Radiated Tortoises were acclimating to their new home. At this point the tortoises had been penned up for eight months without supplemental food or water. We all were anxious to see how they were doing and to release them as soon as possible (we originally planned to keep

them penned for only six months). After some discussions with the forest guardians from the nearby village who monitor the pen and its inhabitants, we discovered that only one of the 1,000 tortoises had died in that eight-month period. That unlucky tortoise unfortunately had fallen into a hole created by a decaying tree, and ultimately perished there.

Over the next week we spent a few hours in the pen each day while the tortoises were active, sometimes in the early mornings, sometimes in the late afternoons, and sometimes both! Our team moved quickly throughout the pen to collect all of the tortoises for shell measurements and weights and to inspect their overall condition prior to release into the forest. As we encountered some of the larger individuals in the pen, we attached radio transmitters and GPS loggers to their carapaces using epoxy putty. We were pleased to see that all of the tortoises appeared to be doing well.

When we were not working with the animals in the pen, we scoured the surrounding forest for resident tortoises. There are few scientific publications on the natural history of these animals, so we also attached radios and GPS loggers to 15 resident tortoises of the same size class as the ones we planned to release. This will give us a better idea of normal behavior and activity in that area. By learning how the resident tortoises use the forest, we can determine if eight months in the pen is long enough to acclimate translocated tortoises to the area and for them to

Brett Bartek

settle into natural movement patterns.

It took quite some time to find 15 resident tortoises in the size class we needed. This area was ravaged by poaching in the past. The forest guardian told us stories of how armed police and military drove through the area collecting tortoises. Thankfully, this practice has ceased and poaching in the forest appears to have stopped altogether. After a little over a week of daily surveys, we still needed one last tortoise. We searched all morning and afternoon and were unable to find tortoise number 15. Although we began the day with hope, by sunset we were riding back to the village, despondent, in the back of our trusty pickup. As we watched the sun sink below the horizon, we turned a corner to find two young boys standing in the road. These boys had found a tortoise and—although there is a taboo against the touching of tortoises practiced by some ethnic groups in southern Madagascar—they had detained the tortoise for us. They kept it in place with logs and holding it with their shoes, knowing that we were eventually going to travel that road as we made our way back to the village (the community residents had quickly become interested in and accustomed to our activities). These boys were thrilled to be involved in the project and I know their excitement was amplified by our own as we realized this was the last tortoise we needed for the project. I know with every fiber of my being that these boys are going to grow up to be true conservation heroes!

Finally, the day came when we were ready to open the pen, officially releasing the tortoises into their new home. We had attached all 50 radios and GPS loggers to tortoises and evaluated the condition of the tortoises in the pen. In the early afternoon, as the tortoises began to leave the shade to forage, our team created three openings in the pen’s walls that were each five meters wide (over 16 feet). Immediately, tortoises from inside the pens saw what was happening and walked through the new openings happily to start foraging on low vegetation. Over our last few days at the release site, our team from the TCC was able to put their newly acquired skills to the test as they tracked all 50 tortoises as they moved throughout the forest.

Every two weeks for the next two years, the staff at the TCC will travel to the release site to keep up with these 50 tortoises. The information we gain from them will help guide our efforts in future rewilding efforts. At least one more release is planned for the end of 2022 at this site and relationships are being built at a second site with a release there expected in 2023. Through 2023 we will also be evaluating several other sites in hopes of finding more protected forests in which to release more tortoises to the wild.

The scale of the poaching problem in Madagascar is enormous. It is imperative that, through community outreach, our team finds safe places where these tortoises can return while we also work with local communities to raise awareness about their ecological value and why they

From left to right: Wild Radiated Tortoises were often observed communicating briefly through face-to-face encounters, as seen here; Brett, Tahina, and village children pose with a rewilded Radiated Tortoise they tracked via radio telemetry at the release site.

should be protected. The process is slow, but after spending time with the people working on the ground, I have faith that these tasks can be accomplished and this species can be saved.

Acknowledgments: First I would like to thank the communities in southern Madagascar that welcomed us with open arms and allowed us to be guests in their homes while working toward the common goal of saving Radiated Tortoises. I would also like to thank the entire TSA Madagascar team for inviting Lance and I to work alongside them on this important project. Finally, I would like to thank Passarella & Associates, Inc. and Cason & Associates, LLC, for allowing Lance and I to take time out of our schedule to be involved in this project. For financial support we extend our sincere gratitude to the following donors: U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Division of International Conservation, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz (AGA) e.V., Gregory Family Charitable Fund, Zoo Knoxville, AZA SAFE, Disney Conservation Fund, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Roy Young, William and Jeanne Dennler, Indianapolis Zoo, Animal Survival International, Dallas Zoo, Tyler Brooks Family, Natural Encounters Conservation Fund, British Chelonia Group, Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, Will Ahrens, Jill Jollay, Virginia Safari Park, Milwaukee County Zoo, Dutch-Belgian Turtle Society, Bonnie Raphael, and numerous other donors. We are extremely grateful to both the Wildlife Conservation Society and St. Louis Zoo Wild Care Institute who provided extensive support for the tortoise pre-release health evaluation and disease screening process, and to the Ministère de l’Environnement et du Développement Durable for their continued partnership and support.

Contact: Brett Bartek, Passarella and Associates, Inc., 13620 Metropolis Ave # 200, Fort Myers, FL, USA 33912 [brettbartek@gmail. com]

Return of the Giant Rewilding the Asian Giant Tortoise

by Shahriar Caesar Rahman

The lush green forest welcomes us with a light drizzle as we walk into its depths. I enjoy the sound of occasional raindrops bouncing off the leaves surrounding us. Besides the occasional whispers of my team members and our field dog, Levy’s, heaving, we carry on in silence, allowing the expanse of the forest to envelop us. It’s a fateful day and we are all excited. After ten years of work, female members of the Mro community will release captive bred Asian Giant Tortoises (Manouria emys) into the wild.

It takes 30 minutes to reach the site that we’ve chosen for the release. Slowly we hand turtles to the women, their eyes wide as they gently hold the creatures. They handle

Headstarted Asian Giant Tortoises rest atop coffee mugs for a short duration to allow epoxy to dry from the attachment of radio transmitters.

the turtles with an almost mother-like demeanor and affection shows in their eyes. Taking a few steps beyond the border marker for the reserve, they place animals slowly on the forest floor and patiently watch them take off into the forest. They wait a few more minutes until the released tortoise can’t be seen within the soft release pen anymore, then turn back to us with smiles. There is a deep sense of gratitude and fulfillment at what we have witnessed. This single action, this experience, will strengthen engagement and participation in our efforts here.

Since 2011, our Bangladesh-based conservation group, Creative Conservation Alliance, in collaboration with Turtle Survival Alliance and Bangladesh Forest Department, has been working on a novel community-based conservation initiative in the remote areas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The Chittagong Hill Tracts is a region of hilly terrain, nearly twice the size of New Jersey, located in the southeast corner of Bangladesh. Considering its remote na-

ture and the area’s complex political situation, a traditional top-down conservation approach has proven ineffective in this region. Realizing these complexities, we partnered with the indigenous Mro tribe in the Sangu-Matamuhuri area to protect and restore populations of critically endangered tortoises and freshwater turtles in this region.

Here, in this isolated region, community members distrust outsiders, particularly due to the decades-long conflict over land tenure between the indigenous peoples and mainland Bengali-speaking people. During the early stages of the program, from 2011–2015, the team focused on building trust and rapport with the Mro communities through community immersion. Once this initial rapport was built, the team began training Mro tribal hunters as parabiologists to conduct surveys, employing their traditional ecological knowledge. In later years, these former-hunters-turned-conservationists acted as ambassadors and played a crucial role sensitizing communities to conservation issues.

In 2017, we established a breeding facility for Asian Giant Tortoises. Findings show that the Asian Giant Tortoise species is on the verge of local extirpation due to chronic subsistence hunting and the destruction of forest habitat by unsustainable slash-and-burn agricultural practices. With support from Mro parabiologists and other conservation groups,

we rescued three male and seven female adult Asian Giant Tortoises from the possession of hunters and transferred them to the breeding facility as the founder population. In 2019, we bred the species for the first time in captivity in Bangladesh, resulting in 46 hatchlings. Two years later, and with those hatchlings now dinner plate-sized juveniles, we began the rewilding of captive bred Asian Giant Tortoises in Bangladesh. Beginning with this release, our goal is to reestablish sustainable populations of this species in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

When introducing young tortoises to the wild, it is important to ensure not only their health, but also the health of other turtles and tortoises living in proximity to the release site. We performed health and pathogen screenings to reduce the risk of potential disease transmission. We also gather valuable data on the tortoises’ health, behavior, and movements following release to determine the efficacy of this release and help guide future releases.

On December 18th, 2021, we released ten juvenile Asian Giant Tortoises with radio transmitters in a 200-hectare (494-acre) community-managed forest in extreme southeast Bangladesh.

To acclimate the ten tortoises to the forest release site, we constructed a large soft release enclosure fenced with bamboo. This practice should instill in the young tortoises site fidelity, an acceptance of the area as their new home range. Our colleagues from the Turtle Survival Alliance and Wildlife Conservation Society program in Myanmar provided us with valuable input to increase our chances of success with this method, as they have proven

From left to right: The village chieftain of the community-managed release site releases a headstarted Asian Giant Tortoise into the forested soft release enclosure; Conservationists from Creative Conservation Alliance pose with headstarted tortoises prior to release in their new forest home; Fahim Zaman offers to a child of the Mro tribe an opportunity to interact with a headstarted Asian Giant Tortoise prior to its release.

this technique successful in their reintroduction of Burmese Star Tortoises (Geochelone platynota) to the wild.

The tortoises acclimated in this exclusive habitat for seven months prior to release, investigating, hiding, and foraging amongst the forest floor like wild tortoises. In July, we released the tortoises from the enclosures simply by taking some of the panels from the fence and allowing the tortoises to disperse. Prior to the release of the tortoises, we signed a conservation agreement with the villagers to protect the tortoise and the forest, as well as ban hunting in the area. A Village Conservation Committee comprising five members under the supervision of the village chief, will act as the local governance system to protect the tortoises and their habitat in the community-managed forest.

Three local Mro villagers have been trained and recruited as parabiologists to conduct post-release monitoring of the tortoises. They monitor the movements and behaviors of the tortoises at least once a week. They also act as local ambassadors for conservation. Seven months after the release, nine out of the ten released tortoises have survived. We do not know why one perished, but it may have been due to stress caused by the translocation

and release. We have observed all other released tortoises active and foraging on natural vegetation. Community members are enthusiastic and are participating actively in the project, taking ownership of this tortoise conservation effort. The 90% survival of the tortoises combined with enthusiasm of local communities towards tortoise conservation during the first seven months of the release is promising for the future of these important creatures in the Chittagong Hills.

Acknowledgments: We acknowledge the Bangladesh Forest Department, Bandarban Hill District Council and Bangladesh Security Forces for supporting our work. For financial support we thank the Gregory Family Charitable Fund, The Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Prince Bernhard Nature Fund, Nashville Zoo, Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo, Burger Zoo, and MilkyWire. We are immensely grateful to the local communities of the Chattogram Hill Tracts region for making our work possible.

Contacts: Shahriar Caesar Rahman, Creative Conservation Alliance, Bhawal National Park, Gazipur, Bangladesh [caesar@ conservationalliance.org]

African Scholarship Program

Building capacity for turtle conservation in West Africa

by Pearson McGovern

The sign read, “Daal leen ak jamm ci Senegal” or “Welcome to Senegal” in Wolof, the most widely spoken language in this West African nation. After months of logistics, the invited attendees of the inaugural African Scholarship Program finally arrived at Blaise Diagne International Airport in Dakar. Nine early career conservationists from six West African countries (Senegal, The Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin)— many traveling internationally for the first time—were here to learn the skills they would need to become the future of turtle conservation in the region.

The coastal town of Ndangane would be our base for the next three days. Ndangane is a small town bisected by the lone paved road bordering the expansive, meandering, and mangrove-rich Saloum Delta of central Senegal. Colorful pirogues line the surrounding shores, as they do much of this productive coastline, Palmyra palms rise above the sand-swept Acacia grasslands, and Yellow-billed Kites and Spur-winged Lapwings provide a constant overhead attraction and background noise. Hyenas can still be heard here at night. This is where our attendees would start their turtle conservation journeys.

Each attendee came prepared to introduce to the group a little about the habitats, economy, culture, people, and, of course, turtles of their respective countries. This is how we began an intensive three-day immersion into all things turtle, a crash course on how to succeed as a turtle biologist. On top of the basics of turtle biology and ecology, we also focused on the inner workings of setting up a conservation project from the ground up, as well as how to seek and secure funding for continued success. These are vital lessons if these attendees are to succeed in conservation in a part of the world that has long lagged behind in regard to researching and conserving its turtle diversity.

All courses over the next three days took place in a homey, screened-in building just big enough to accommodate the group, yet small enough to create a familial, encouraging environment perfect for discussions and team building. This was the goal: create a close-knit network of trained turtle biologists ready to tackle the challenges of conserving turtles and tortoises in West Africa.

There comes a time when classroom knowledge must be applied. We started by visiting the nationally famous Village des Tortues (Turtle Village), a facility co-founded by African Chelonian Institute Director Tomas Diagne. Village des Tortues is currently run by Tomas’ cousin Lamine Diagne, and welcomes nearly 18,000 students each year and is home to over 300 African Spurred Tortoise (Centrochelys sulcata), the world’s third largest tortoise species. Here, at the largest in-range breeding facility for the species, the attendees witnessed and interacted with all life stages of this charismatic emblem of the Sahel—now one of Senegal’s rarest chelonians. Unfortunately, a wild African Spurred Tortoise in Senegal has now become the equivalent of a needle in a haystack. This is in stark contrast to the common status this tortoise holds throughout the world as a “household pet,” one of the unarguable drivers behind its extirpation in many places. Next, we headed to the African Chelonian Institute where attendees got hands on with 16 of Africa’s chelonian species, including 11 of the 17 currently recognized African side-necked turtles of the genus Pelusios, the second most diverse turtle genus in the world next to Kinosternon, the mud turtles of the Western Hemisphere.

The hands-on experiences didn’t stop there. The

Pearson McGovern

the village of Wendou Thile to meet with Chief Ndiawar to learn about the history of the reserve and the status of Adanson’s Mud Turtle in Lac de Guiers. The village is one of five involved in conserving and managing Tocc-Tocc Community Reserve.

next day, we loaded up the vans and headed for the lifeblood of Senegal’s arid north, Lac de Guiers. This lake, about one and half times the size of Washington D.C., is the water source for millions of Senegalese, but also the only in-country habitat for the most northern ranging Pelusios in Africa, the Adanson’s Mud Terrapin (Pelusios adansonii). This is the site of a conservation success story we were eager to share with the attendees, a site where consumers had become conservationists and where exploitation became sustainable use.

In the northwestern corner of the lake lies Tocc-Tocc Community Reserve, a protected area managed by 25 local eco-guards from five villages. Turtles used to be eaten here when they were caught in the fishing nets that provide the locals with their main source of income. However, after years of consistent collaboration with the communities, terrapins (and the many other species that call this site home) are being protected and appreciated. In fact, each year we are now able to release headstarted terrapins to augment

this previously exploited population, and the attendees did just that. Each attendee put the marking, measuring, and data collection skills they had learned to the test by preparing their own terrapin for release.

Just as the terrapin releases are only one measure in a larger conservation story, attendees immediately recognized that this week of learning and their many experiences were just the beginning of their impacts on turtle conservation in their home countries. It is our hope that this inaugural program is the start of a yearly education initiative to train the next generation of turtle biologists in Africa.

Acknowledgments: Funding was generously provided by The Mohammed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Turtle Conservation Fund, Zoo Med Laboratories, and the Tusk Trust.

Contact: Pearson McGovern, African Chelonian Institute, Senegal, Africa [pmcgovern@africanchelonian.org]

Clockwise from left: Attendees of the inaugural African Scholarship Program meet with Captain Ousmane Ndiaye of the National Park Service to discuss management of Tocc-Tocc Community Reserve; African Chelonian Institute Director Tomas Diagne introduces attendees to the diversity of turtles kept at the institute; West African Mud Turtle from Azagny National Park, Côte d’Ivoire; Attendees visit

Exploring Lewa Renewed hope for the Pancake Tortoise

by Marc Dupuis-Désormeaux and Dominic Maringa

For the longest time, Suberi Letoki, a member of the Leparua community that sits just north of the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy paid little attention to the Pancake Tortoises (Malacochersus tornieri) living within the rocky outcrops in and around the village. As a young man, he grew up seeing the little tortoises, but dismissed them as undergrown Leopard Tortoises (Stigmochelys pardalis). He, and many others in the community, did not regard them as anything special, but that has since changed. They now realize that they are highly endangered, valuable members of the ecosystem, and can hold much allure from a tourism perspective.

Suberi recalls how, as a boy, he would be lucky to come across the tortoises now and then next to a rock outcrop, especially after a downpour. “I would see the tortoises venture out of their hiding place within the rocks and cliffs momentarily, sometimes resting in little puddles of water.” Fast forward forty years and Suberi is now a ranger protecting rhi-

nos and other wildlife inside Lewa and has recently learned about the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Critically Endangered status of these tortoises. Suberi now has been recruited as a critical member of a multi-agency survey team trying to find remaining pockets of Pancake Tortoises in protected areas. He uses all his ranger skills and his deep memory of where he has seen the tortoises in the past to help guide the surveys. He recalls how long ago he once came across 30 in a single day. The team has had much success because of rangers like Suberi. With his expert assistance, the current survey efforts have found 116 tortoises over two field seasons around Lewa and the neighboring Leparua and Il Ngwesi communities.

Pliable and fast, the Pancake Tortoise is a morphologically and behaviorally distinct turtle. It is small in size, at approximately six inches when mature, and possesses a thin, flat, and flexible shell. Numerous holes in the bones under the scales make it lightweight and agile. Thus, the Pancake

Marc Dupuis-Désormeaux

Clockwise from left: Suberi Letoki holds a juvenile Pancake Tortoise. The team wears gloves when they touch a tortoise to reduce the chances of introducing any diseases; Data is systematically recorded from a vibrant adult tortoise; Dominic Maringa (Head of Conservation–Lewa) and Suberi Letoki search for a Pancake Tortoise in a rock crevice.

is arguably the fastest tortoise species, its morphology allowing it to flee swiftly from predators rather than sheltering in its shell as other tortoises do. The Pancake Tortoise’s flexible shell also helps it to live within tight rock crevices.

Pancake Tortoises spend most of their time in these cracks between rocks. They are mostly solitary, but these crevices can be inhabited by pairs or small groups. They have a life expectancy of more than 40 years and have limited reproductive potential, laying only one or two eggs per year. Because of overexploitation by the pet trade, this species is now rare and classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Surveying for the tortoises is difficult work. Appropriate habitat is not common or widespread. Surveys are conducted on foot, from sunup to sundown where terrain is hilly and craggy and the equatorial sun is relentless. The tortoises push themselves deep into the rocky crevices, so Suberi and the team must lie across the hot rocks and gently pull the tortoises out of their hiding places. Team members must investigate these dark crevices where there is the constant threat of “bumping into” other denizens of the cracks searching for a cool resting spot, such as Ashe’s spitting cobras, scorpions, and lizards. The rocky habitat is also home to an abundance of much larger wildlife; the survey team has encountered grumpy rhinoceros, standoffish African buffalo, aggressive elephants, startled hyenas, and angry bees.

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy sits on the flanks of Mount Kenya and its location sits between historic tortoise populations in the north and isolated populations in the south. The conservation department at Lewa has taken a keen interest in studying the Pancake Tortoise. In 2019, 2021, and 2022, Lewa, together with the National Museums of Kenya and the Kenya Wildlife Service, have been exploring hillsides looking for the Pancake Tortoise. Lewa is a world-renowned black rhino sanctuary and is heavily guarded against potential poachers. Because these tortoises have been found in such well protected areas, poaching, the major threat to their long-term survival, has been removed there.

The discovery of Pancakes within Lewa and neighboring areas extends the distribution range of the species, both in that these tortoises are in previously undocumented areas but also at higher altitude than expected. This newly discovered tortoise population has benefited from 40+ years of protection offered to the megafauna in this area. It has been undisturbed by poaching or by changes in the landscape due to human development. It offers us the chance to study

a pristine population, better understand dispersal patterns, and protect a critical corridor that would link the tortoises of northern Kenya to the ones found in the south.

Acknowledgments: We thank the survey team members including Patrick Malonza and Victor Wasonga of the National Museums of Kenya, Mathew Mutinda and John Logeme of the Kenya Wildlife Service, as well as Sumberi Toki, Timothy N. Kaaria, Francis Kobia, Hannah Mungai, Cyrus Kisio, JJ Apodaca, Cristina Jones, Brian D. Horne, Andrew Walde and Sue Carstairs. We also thank the funders of the surveys, Turtle Survival Alliance, Lewa Canada, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, and the Alan and Patricia Koval Foundation.

Contact: Marc Dupuis-Desormeaux, Glendon College - York University, 2275 Bayview Ave, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4N 3M6 [marcd2@me.com]; Dominic Maringa, Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Meru County, Kenya [dominic.maringa@lewa.org]

On the Move

Rewilding Northern River Terrapins to the Indian Sundarbans

by Shailendra Singh, Saurabh Dewan, Upamanyu Chakraborty, and S. Justin Jones

Alittle before six o’clock on an early January evening, as the day begins to ebb away, Sukumar, a Forest Department guard, sets to leave for his “second home.” He heads toward a paddock nestled in a remote area of Sundarbans National Park to have a last look and sing one of his lullabies to a group of Northern River Terrapins (Batagur baska), one of the most endangered turtles in the world. The largest female, affectionately named Kali, seems restless. She has moved to the farthest corner of the penned area of our soft release site. On the other side of the fence are the vast mangrove swamps bordering the Bay of Bengal. She and nine other subadult terrapins will soon call this wild expanse home. Sukumar clings to the agitated turtles as he takes them one by one to makeshift pens to prepare each turtle for release.

On January 19, 2022, ten captive-bred Northern River Terrapins were released into the wild in the Indian Sundarbans, the first rewilding of this Critically Endangered species in India.

As a child born in a village on the park’s fringe, Sukumar witnessed firsthand the hatching program initiated for the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle (Lepidochelys olivacae) on south-facing island beaches in the early 1990s. Watching the small, grayish hatchlings clamor their way to the Bay of Bengal was a defining experience in his life. Sukumar started his working life as an assistant on a tourist boat, then later cleaned turtle ponds at Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary. There, his fascination for turtles grew. For the next two decades, Sukumar developed an eternal kinship with the Northern River Terrapins at the Sanctuary. It was during Sukumar’s time working at Sajnekhali that, in 2008, Turtle Survival Alliance’s India Program and Sundarbans Tiger Reserve team identified a rare group of 12 Northern River Terrapins inhabiting a pond at the Sajnekhali Interpretation Center. With so few wild survivors, immediate actions were necessary to stave off the terrapin’s extinction and this captive group in their native range presented an historic opportunity. Together with the West Bengal Forest Department, we soon initiated a captive breeding initiative that has today produced nearly 400 juvenile terrapins.

Upamanyu Chakraborty

A subadult Northern River Terrapin is ceremoniously blessed by a priest at the temple of Bonbibi, the forest goddess of the Sundarbans, prior to its release.

The Sundarbans is an immense mosaic of tidal rivers and mangrove forests spanning 10,000 square kilometers across southeastern India and southwestern Bangladesh. It is an ecologically unique delta roughly the size of Jamaica. The Northern River Terrapin was once a common species here. Now, sadly, though the beauty of the delta remains, the turtle does not. We estimate no more than 20 individuals persist across the landscape.

The Northern River Terrapin was driven to the brink of extinction by the end of the 20th century due to hunting for its meat and eggs and habitat loss. But it survived in captivity in India thanks to the determination of Sukumar and other Forest Department staff. Sundarbans Tiger Reserve staff tell stories about years marred by cyclones, when the rain was unforgiving and floodwaters tore through the terrapin enclosures, and about the salties (crocodiles) that, when storms came, never hesitated to close in on the Interpretation Center’s higher ground. Reserve staff have become strangely accustomed to the fact that, just around the corner of an otherwise perfectly serene setting, there may be a ferocious Bengal Tiger. Such tales of devotion and care emphasize the remarkable efforts to achieve what was formerly thought unattainable: the return of Northern River Terrapins to the Sundarbans.

On January 19, 2022, Turtle Survival Alliance India Program and Sundarbans Tiger Reserve announced the rewilding of ten captive-bred Northern River Terrapins into a tidal river within Sundarbans National Park. The group of terrapins, aged approximately nine years, represent the first monitored return of this species to the wild in India. The turtles are all offspring of the founder animals we identified in 2008. Their release symbolizes in a beautiful way a more than decades-long journey by our program, and encapsulates what locals can do to further harmonious accord between humans and wildlife.

Hundreds of locals gathered on the ‘Puja’ day—the day prior to the release. The ten terrapins were ceremoniously blessed by a priest at the temple of Bonbibi, the forest goddess of the Sundarbans. Bonbibi is equally revered by both Hindu and Muslim communities. With the goal to re-establish wild terrapin populations in a human-dominated ecosystem where fishing practices are intense, establishing a cultural connection encourages local riverine communities to embrace the return of their iconic turtle.

“They say you should see these terrapins before they’re all gone,” said Upamanyu Chakraborty, citing the fishing communities’ views toward the nearly extinct species. “That sentiment is all wrong; the more of us who witness these wildlife miracles, the more of us will strive to protect it...But be sure to read the signs and keep a safe distance between you and the Bengal Tiger,” chuckled the young tiger-tracking biologist who is now Turtle Survival Alliance’s Northern River Terrapin project leader. “You’ll do nothing for the cause if you end up down the gullet of the tiger.”

The following morning, Sareng, the boatman, set the course toward the core of the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve. Turtle Survival Alliance biologists–Sreeparna Dutta and Pawan Pareek and Reserve staff watched over the ten terrapins, the protagonists of the day’s epic journey. Upamanyu looked upon the turtles with elation. Being face-to-face with them gave him an ultimate reminder of nature’s vitality and the natural wonders still left in this world.

That night the team made camp at the isolated outpost of Chamta. With the night sky full of brightly lit stars and a cool breeze blowing, the Sundarbans was a place of absolute tranquility. A Buffy Fish Owl repeated its melancholy cry, cicadas buzzed in an enchanting crescendo, and Spotted Deer gave an occasional alarm stating the presence of the Bengal Tiger.

The following morning at low tide a team on a small motorboat navigated shallow creeks to look for a suitable mudflat, clear of any tigers on the prowl, for releasing the turtles. The junction of large tidal creeks found in our previous habitat evaluation was decided on as the release site. Located in the core of Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, with the nearest human settlement 30 km (19 mi) away, the release site features large creeks running in three directions, providing several options for terrapins to roam.

As the sun made its way up over the horizon, a layer of mist formed over the cool brackish water, scattering light as if through a kaleidoscope. The boat with the terrapins led the way through the shimmering light of dawn. As it came to its mooring along the mudflat, a human fence of armed

forest guards stood facing the mangroves, on watch for any of the area’s famed “man-eating tigers.” When the biologists came ashore with the terrapins, the turtles took center stage in royal fashion. The team trudged through the thick pluff mud and assembled under a large Apple Mangrove with numerous biologists, government officials, and other onlookers who were all there to see the turtles off. No longer would the turtles live in manicured habitats, be fed a daily buffet, or receive routine health inspections. Today, amid great fanfare, the ten turtles clamored their way down the mudflat into the untamed, unpredictable world that is the Sundarbans.

As unpredictable as the Sundarbans are, so too are the turtles’ habits following their foray into the wild. Each turtle’s movements are as unique as the turtles themselves. Frequent GPS signals show Kali to be making considerable movements. She’s large, equipped with powerful webbed feet, and working to find a part of the species’ natural habitat in which to settle. The distance she traveled over a short amount of time did, however, surprise us. In just the first month, Kali traveled more than 300 km (186 mi), and into the Bangladeshi Sundarbans. Several others also traveled into Bangladesh, two of which were captured by fisherman (read their story on page 46). Others, like Lakshmi, are more homebodies. She moved just 25 km (16 mi) upstream, into the vicinity of the soft release environment in Jihla: a small distance when compared to Kali. A male, Kesto, has moved north and is residing in tributaries close to the suburbs of Kolkata, the

Clockwise from left: In less than a month following the terrapins’ release, they had cumulatively dispersed over an area of nearly 6,000 square kilometers, to more than half the size of the Sundarbans; Sreeparna, Pawan, and Upamanyu equip a terrapin with a satellite and radio transmitter; The historic terrapin release was a collaborative effort by Turtle Survival Alliance, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, and West Bengal Forest Department; Northern River Terrapins naturally reside in fresh to saline waters of the Sundarbans mangrove forests; Shailendra Singh performs radio telemetry to track the terrapins’ movements following release.

capital of West Bengal. These newly rewilded terrapins’ lives are fraught with uncertainty and every GPS signal relayed gives our team a sigh of relief. They are, after all, our hope for the future of this iconic species.

Acknowledgments: We are grateful to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, West Bengal Forest Department (WBFD), Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong, and People’s Trust for Endangered Species, for financially supporting this project. We are thankful to PCCF and HoFF, WBFD Mr. Soumitras Dasgupta, former HoFF, Mr. Jose T. Mathew, PCCF Wildlife Mr. Debal Ray, Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve Director Mr. Piar Chand, and Sundarbans Tiger Reserve (STR) Field Director Mr. Tapas Das for providing guidance and logistic support. We thank For-

mer STR Director Mr. Nilanjan Mallick and DFD Mr. Deepak M. for all their support. We thank AFDs, STR Mr. Partho Tripathi and Mr. Soumen Mandal, ROs Mr. Bishwajeet Das, Mr. Sayed Saeef Ur Rahman, and their staff for all their support. We are thankful to Ms. Rishika Dubla, Sreeparna Dutta, Arpita Dutta, and Pawan Pareek from Turtle Survival Alliance for all their support. We are thankful to Bangladesh Forest and Police departments for retrieving captured turtles. We are grateful to Zoo Vienna, especially Ms. Doris Preininger, for sharing her knowledge on previous terrapin releases and telemetry.

Contact: Shailendra Singh, Turtle Survival Alliance India Program, D1/317, Sector F, Jankipuram, Lucknow, India [shai@turtlesurvival. org]; S. Justin Jones, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, West Bengal Forest Department, Canning, South 24 Parganas, India [jonesatjustin@ gmail.com]

An Extraordinary Journey

India and Bangladesh cooperate to return Northern River Terrapins to the wild

by Doris Preininger, Rupali Ghosh, Peter Praschag, and Anton Weissenbacher

Around six weeks after our colleagues in India released Northern River Terrapins (Batagur baska) into the Sundarbans, the station manager of the Bangladesh Batagur conservation center in Karamjal received a phone call. He was informed that a terrapin was found in Bangladesh, 350 km (218 mi) from its release site.

The Sundarbans is a mangrove forest intersected by several small and large channels and streams. The forest lies in a vast delta of the Bay of Bengal, covering an area approximately the size of the island of Jamaica. The larger part of the region (about 60%) is in Bangladesh, with the remainder in India. This turtle swam across the border without a passport!

Though much of the Sundarbans is protected, it is legal to fish on both sides of the border. This terrapin was caught by a fisherman while checking his net, where he found a turtle with an unusual structure fixed to its back. It was a satellite transmitter sending signals to India, informing our colleagues there of the movements of this Critically Endangered animal. On its shell the fisherman also found a note glued to the transmitter saying: “please report to this number if you find me!”

The fisherman brought the terrapin to the nearest police station, where police reported it to the local forest department. Forest department staff immediately knew what to do, as the Bangladesh Batagur project team had released turtles with similar transmitters in previous years. With the forest department’s help, the terrapin was transferred to our collaborative conservation stations at Karamjal,

A female Northern River Terrapin makes its way down a mudlflat and into a Sundarbans river system upon re-release.

Bangladesh, where we maintain over 400 Northern River Terrapins. There it received a health check and the information was passed on to our Indian colleagues.

A week later, a second terrapin was captured by another fisherman, who reported it to the nearest forest post the same night. Both terrapins had minor abrasions on their skin from the fishing nets and were released for recovery into one of the ponds housing other subadult terrapins.

Soon, all partners met over Zoom to discuss a re-release of the terrapins into the Bangladeshi Sundarbans. The Vienna Zoo team was scheduled to visit their project site in Bangladesh in May and, after receiving permits from both countries, they traveled with the Indian terrapins to a remote location and released them into the transnational river system. Similar to nature, conservation knows no borders, and cross-border collaborations are possible and desperately needed to protect wildlife.

Acknowledgments: We thank our local partners Prokriti O Jibon Foundation and Bangladesh Forest Department and our funders Austrian Zoo Organisation (OZO) and the Society of the Friends of Schönbrunn Zoo for their support.

Contacts: Doris Preininger, Vienna Zoo, Maxingstraße 13b, 1130, Vienna, Austria [d.preininger@zoovienna.at]

Anton Weissenbacher

Confiscation to Conservation

Rescued Painted Terrapins present conservation breeding potential

by Joko Guntoro

Rarely is there a cool day in northeastern Sumatra and, as usual, this is not one of them. It’s 10:33 in the morning and the temperature is already a sweltering 91°F (33 °C). We are, after all, just a couple hundred miles north of the equator. Having lived here all my life I’m used to the intense heat and humidity, and so is the wildlife.

As our eyes fix on a concrete pool, several large turtles dive in from their basking positions on large logs and the pool edge. Our arrival has disturbed their sunbathing. Even in this coastal refuge where the average daily temperature is stiflingly hot, turtles haul out of the water to regulate body temperature, receive beneficial UV rays, and rid their shells of parasites. These sunbathers are Painted Terrapins (Batagur borneoensis), a Critically Endangered species na-

tive to equatorial Southeast Asia.

This morning, Doni, Aini, Rio, Putra, Matsah, and I are at the Karang Gading Langkat Timur Laut (KGLTL) Wildlife Sanctuary in the District of Langkat, North Sumatra. The Wildlife Sanctuary, a key biodiversity area, covers more than 13,500 hectares (33,000 acres) of mangrove forest, providing important refuge for protected and threatened species. And it’s here that the future of the Painted Terrapin in North Sumatra lies. Today we are measuring the growth of 85 juvenile terrapins being reared in captivity and checking on the adults now under our collective care. We measure the juveniles’ growth regularly and clean their pool weekly. The rapidly growing juveniles are products of successful nest patrol and egg incubation efforts in this district from 2019 to 2022. All originate from

A group of headstarted Painted Terrapins await regular health inspections and having their measurements taken at the Karang Gading Langkat Timur Laut Wildlife Reserve in North Sumatra.

From left to right: This beautiful male Painted Terrapin was turned over to the Satucita Foundation and Agency of Conservation of Natural Resources after being caught by a fisherman. He will now serve as a founder of a new breeding program for the species at the Karang Gading Langkat Timur Laut Wildlife Sanctuary; The Wildlife Sanctuary is a key biodiversity area in North Sumatra, providing important refuge for threatened and endangered species.

just 11 nests. If we assume that a single female terrapin lays one clutch of eggs per season, we can conclude with fairly high confidence that the young turtles under our care are the offspring of 11 or fewer females—a very low number. Genetic studies are needed to accurately assess how many females are successfully contributing to future generations of terrapins in North Sumatra.

The adult terrapins come from far different but, thankfully successful, operations. There are currently four, two males and two females, all the result of trafficking seizures that we, the Satucita Foundation, and the Agency of Conservation of Natural Resources (Balai Besar Konservasi Sumber Daya Alam/BBKSDA)–Province of North Sumatra, carried out in the last few months. The turtles are now in a quarantine pond, where abrasions they sustained from fishing nets can heal. Our plan is to use these terrapins—which otherwise would have been sold for food—as founders for a captive breeding program at the Wildlife Sanctuary. Their genetics are important to the preservation of the province’s terrapin population.

Considering that only 11 nests have been located on the beaches of North Sumatra over the course of three nesting seasons despite hundreds of hours of searching, the integration of a complementary captive breeding program may prove highly beneficial to ensuring Painted Terrapins persist in North Sumatra.

Within the past year we’ve released three additional adults, two females and one male, back into the wild at the Wildlife Sanctuary. The first release occurred on October 12, 2021, when we released a male that had been relin-

quished to us by a resident of Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, one week earlier. Then, on June 9th of this year, we released two females that we had cared for since they were confiscated from illegal trade in Medan in November 2021. We released those females because of limited capacity at the facility at the time: the size of the facility (the pond too small to accommodate more individuals) and the high likelihood that we would receive more adult terrapins in the future from confiscations or relinquishments.

Our activities in North Sumatra have demonstrated the wild population of Painted Terrapin in Langkat to be small, nest patrols to be costly, illegal ownership and trade to occur, and the current facility lacking in appropriate habitats to accommodate the number of terrapins necessary for a robust and genetically diverse breeding population. Therefore, the future of this Critically Endangered species in Langkat depends developing a conservation strategy and necessary resources for the integration of headstarting, confiscation, and captive breeding.

Acknowledgments: We thank the Turtle Survival Alliance, Houston Zoo, Asian Species Action Partnership, and Synchronicity Earth for their support of the Satucita Foundation in 2022. We also thank BBKSDA North Sumatra for their collaboration on this conservation program.

Contact: Joko Guntoro, Satucita Foundation, Dusun Mawar, Desa Bukit Rata, Kejuruan Muda, Aceh Tamiang, Indonesia, 24477 [jokoguntoro@gmail.com]

When the Unexpected Happens

Discovering the Nubian Flapshell in northern Uganda

by Luca Luiselli

Ihave spent more than half my life in Africa, and for 28 years, I have spent at least seven months a year there.

I’ve taught at several African universities and I’ve been an ecological researcher in many different countries. Yet, it was only with studies dedicated to saving the Nubian Flapshell Turtle (Cyclanorbis elegans) from extinction did I finally feel I had found significant purpose in my professional life. The bitter fate of this big (up to 80 cm carapace length) and wonderful turtle, in fact, struck me so deeply that trying to save it has been, for me, in the last 5 years, the reason for life.

The Nubian Flapshell Turtle inhabits the savannah wetlands of Africa and is among the Earth’s most threatened turtles. This is a Critically Endangered species that I and my team at the University of Juba, South Sudan (G.S. Demaya, J.S. Benansio and field assistants/students), rediscovered in 2017 along the White Nile River. I have studied Nubian Flapshells for the last five years, jointly with Turtle Survival Alliance, in the hopes of discovering new populations of this species.

During my surveys for this elusive species, I collected field data on the observed/captured individuals and completed more than 500 interviews with fishermen. The data revealed that the monthly frequency of sightings of Nubian Flapshells (a proxy of the species’ relative abundance in the field) in the White Nile tended to decrease northwards from Juba and increased to the south. Therefore, I decided to explore the extreme southern regions of South Sudan and the northern part of Uganda, where the course of the White Nile crosses gallery forests and heavily vegetated savannas and features expansive floodplain wetlands. Finding Nubian Flapshells in this area was unlikely given that nobody has ever found this species in these southern territories, but, “ex Africa semper aliquid novi” (out of Africa there is always something new) as Pliny The Elder is credited with saying…so, you never know!

As is our methodology, my team worked in the field this past year with an interdisciplinary approach, including baited trapping, visual encounter surveys, and face-to-face interviews with fishermen who work along the White Nile

Luca Luiselli

From left to right: Nubian Flapshell Turtles seem to prefer heavily vegetated areas of the White Nile River near the South Sudan/Uganda border; Gift Simon Demaya carries a Nubian Flapshell Turtle. The research team systematically recorded scientific data from the turtle and released it back into the White Nile immediately after.

River and its tributaries. We also examined all turtle shells kept by villagers in all the settlements throughout the region. It was a substantial effort for all of us and Turtle Survival Alliance’s ongoing support was a great help providing additional resources and expertise.

The survey area in northern Uganda is characterized by gallery forests along the White Nile as well as the marshlands of the Onyama River and of the Paanzalla, Difule, and Laropi areas. This was once the last sanctuary in this region for the White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum). Sadly, it was extirpated in the late 1980s during the civil unrest that afflicted Uganda and South Sudan. The whole area was considered traditionally unsafe for foreigners and, in fact, for many years access was forbidden to white people. The situation, however, is improving now and carrying out field research is reasonably safer in present day.

During our surveys of August and September 2021, my team (five surveyors including myself) spent about 600 person/hours over 12 days until we finally observed a live Nubian Flapshell in a very remote area of northern Uganda where the species has never before been recorded. We also found three shells of formerly living turtles; additional evidence of their presence there. I was thrilled by this discovery and by the opportunity it presented to save this species from predictable extinction.

The knowledge we now have of a persisting population of Nubian Flapshell Turtles in northern Uganda is all-important to better strategizing conservation actions for this near-extinct species, yet we know nothing of its distribution nor population size, and the local communities are not at all aware of the biodiversity value of this species. What we do, however, know, is that the local population suffers from overfishing, as it is captured by local fishermen both for subsistence and, more worryingly, selling to the Chinese expat community. Habitat loss seems to be the least important threat factor, as the area is quite remote and not yet severely altered by development initiatives.

Immediately after discovering this population, I coordinated with Turtle Survival Alliance and we decided to establish a conservation project for this population. So, I rushed first to the University of Juba and then to the University of Makerere in Kampala (over 10 hours drive from the border between South Sudan and Uganda) to obtain all the necessary permits and governmental agreements. My efforts were successful: just two weeks after the discovery of the first Ugandan Nubian Flapshell, we had all the needed documents in hand and could write and submit the project

proposal that was eventually accepted for funding by the Division of International Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2022.

With evidence of the Nubian Flapshell’s presence in Uganda and permits and funding in hand, we are set to begin field operations in the latter half of 2022. In this project, my team and I will, (1) explore the target area and other neighboring territories to better understand the distribution of the Nubian Flapshell, (2) initiate a capture-mark-recapture study in an attempt to determine the species’ population size, and (3) organize activities to enhance the awareness of local communities towards the conservation of this species. My recently found life’s work to save the Nubian Flapshell Turtle from extinction in the wild has continued purpose.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to project collaborators Gift Simon Demaya, Mathias Behangana, and John Sebit Benansio, and the Master’s students at the University of Juba for their assistance with fieldwork, and to Turtle Survival Alliance, Tim Gregory, and Division of International Conservation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for providing financial and logistical support.

Contact: Luca Luiselli, Institute for Development, Ecology, Conservation and Cooperation, via G. Tomasi di Lampedusa 33, 00144 Rome, Italy [l.luiselli@ideccngo.org]

Perseverance in Myanmar

Breeding

success, but ongoing challenges for Big-headed Turtles

by Steven G. Platt

Without a doubt, November 2016 ranks as the most trying period of my career as a biologist working to save turtles in Southeast Asia. In late November, my Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) colleague Win Ko Ko and I were conducting a tortoise survey in the Bago Hills of Myanmar when we got the news: almost 1,000 Big-headed Turtles (Platysternon megacephalum) had been seized by the Forest Department on the Myanmar-Thailand border. The turtles were in horrible shape, with many near death. We were instructed to drop everything, come out of the mountains immediately, and assist in what quickly morphed into an all-out international turtle rescue effort.

We needed several days to extricate ourselves from the mountains and travel to the Turtle Rescue Center (TRC) in the hills above Mandalay. Care and rehabilitation of the turtles was well underway by the time we arrived. Turtle Survival Alliance/WCS Myanmar Program field staff, together with veterinarians and animal care practitioners from Singapore and the United States, were working feverishly to provide critical emergency care to an overwhelming number of turtles. The atmosphere of an air-raid pervaded this

effort and it was all-hands-on-deck!

I wasn’t prepared for the scene that greeted us—hundreds of dying turtles, most well beyond any hope of recovery. We worked nonstop for the next month but despite our Herculean efforts, only about 100 out of the almost 1,000 confiscated turtles ultimately survived. Not only was the outcome emotionally devastating to all involved, but our experience highlights the huge loss of life involved in the wild animal trade: carnage nonchalantly dismissed by traffickers as nothing more than the “cost of doing business.”

This scenario played out again the following year when 385 Big-headed Turtles were seized by the Forest Department. This time both the Forest Department staff, which closely adhered to the post-seizure protocols we developed after the previous year’s confiscation, and the Turtle Survival Alliance/WCS confiscation response team were able to begin administering palliative care within hours of the seizure. Our results speak for themselves: 359 of the 385 confiscated turtles were still alive one year later.

Owing to their pugnacious nature, Big-headed Turtles must be kept in individual tanks and isolated from others of their species except during courtship and mating. With

almost 500 turtles to care for, our facilities and resources were quickly stretched to the breaking point. Fortunately, several donors came to the rescue with emergency funding that enabled us to purchase a truckload of large fiberglass tanks in which to house each turtle individually as a stopgap measure until we could construct something more permanent. Meanwhile, we began developing plans to repatriate those turtles not destined for the assurance colony into a protected area in southern Myanmar.

In 2018, our plans came to fruition when a private donor with a big heart and passion for turtles funded the construction of a facility for an assurance colony at the TRC. As with any captive breeding program, the goal of our assurance colony is not simply to warehouse turtles but to produce offspring for eventual release back into the wild. We completed the facility in 2019 and shortly thereafter selected 100 turtles from the confiscation survivors to serve as founders. Each turtle now has a spacious individual habitat consisting of terrestrial space and a deep-water pool with plenty of cover. In the wild, Big-headed Turtles are extremely cryptic, hiding themselves beneath rocks or squeezing into submerged rock crevices. To replicate these conditions in captivity, each enclosure is well planted and rock shelters in the pool provide aquatic hideaways.

To facilitate Big-headed Turtle reproduction, we manually transfer males between pens and closely monitor courtship and mating, ready to intervene if either member becomes overly aggressive towards its partner. Our efforts are beginning to yield results and 2021 proved to be a milestone when two eggs hatched. In May and June of this year we again paired male and female turtles for breeding. On July 1st we were rewarded with a female Big-headed Turtle laying the first clutch of the year. Incredibly, by season’s end, our turtle matchmaking has resulted in the cumulative laying of 59 eggs, all of which are still incubating. With so many eggs under incubation we have high hopes for the 2022 hatching season!

From left to right: Adult Big-headed Turtles confiscated in 2016 and 2017 are now successfully reproducing; A facility was constructed at the Turtle Rescue Center to properly house turtles in individual units; Breeding success commenced with the hatching of two turtles in 2021.

Unfortunately, recent events have conspired to hinder progress. First, after having identified a suitable release site and secured funding, our planned repatriation of almost 400 confiscation survivors ground to a halt as COVID-19-related restrictions made travel impossible. Then, in February 2021, just as COVID-19 appeared to be waning and the country moved towards opening, military leaders supplanted Myanmar’s democratically-elected leader in a coup d’état, which has led to widespread civil unrest and ongoing conflict between military and resistance fighters. Our planned repatriation site is now a war zone, effectively putting an indefinite hold on our project.

The timing of these developments couldn’t be worse. Growing demand from supposed “turtle farms” in China makes the Big-headed Turtle among the most sought after turtle in Southeast Asia. Only an aggressive combination of captive breeding, headstarting, and translocation coupled with ramped up law enforcement offers the Big-headed Turtle any hope of survival in the wild.

Acknowledgments: Andy Sabin and the Sabin Family Foundation, Mandai Nature, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Panaphil Foundation, Paul and Linda Gould, Paul Goulet and Little Rays Reptiles, Save Our Species, and all those who assisted during confiscations.

Contact: Steven G. Platt, Wildlife Conservation Society - Myanmar Program,No.12 Nanrattaw St.,Kamayut Township, Yangon, Myanmar [splatt@wcs.org]

Big Breakthrough

Optimism for Southern River Terrapin breeding

by Sitha Som

The moment my fingertips grasp the eggshell I know something is different and a smile comes over my face. The eggshell, though somewhat pliable, has greater rigidity than the 71 eggs laid in February 2021. I lift the uppermost egg from the sandy haven in which its mother buried it last night. It’s large and oblong, greater in size and weight than a jumbo chicken egg, and of a pinkish-white hue. It’s beautiful, as are the 18 laying beneath it.

A turtle’s eggshell is composed of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) and trace organic and inorganic matter. But the ratio of organic matter matters: more results in a thinner and more flexible shell. We hypothesized that the low hatch rate of fertile eggs in 2021 was linked to egg quality—something we could improve through adjusting the adult turtles’ diet.

On the night of January 5th, the mother of this egg clutch, a captive-reared adult female Southern River Terrapin (Batagur affinis), crawled from the breeding pond and fashioned a pit in the sand in which she carved a smaller flask-shaped egg chamber. She then patiently and meticulously deposited and positioned 19 eggs with her

back feet and scraped and kneaded sand back over them. This is an instinctual process perfected by evolution over millennia and one that gives her eggs the best chance of hatching successfully. Her job ends there. Once she covers the nest and returns to the muddy water, her eggs’ fate is out of her control.

In the wild, nature determines a Southern River Terrapin egg’s destiny. Remaining for more than two months on a riverbank or sandbar, the egg clutch is susceptible to a multitude of variables, such as flooding and predation, that will decide its success or failure—yielding life or death. In the wild, the Southern River Terrapin teeters precariously on the brink of extinction. But this particular female terrapin has lived and grown to adulthood in the safety of the Koh Kong Reptile Conservation Center (KKRCC) in southwest Cambodia. She’s part of a new era for Cambodia’s Southern River Terrapins.

In 2021 we heralded the nesting of five headstarted Southern River Terrapins on our artificial sandbank at the KKRCC. They were the first captive-reared Southern River Terrapins to nest in Cambodia (and the first of this species ever to nest in captivity in Cambodia). Our joy soon

Steven Platt; Phun Thorn

was met with relative disappointment, as only one of the 71 eggs hatched successfully. The turtle—affectionately named “Steve”—is thriving in the newly renovated rearing habitats at the KKRCC.

Following last year’s mostly unsuccessful hatch, I worked extensively with KKRCC Manager Chris Poyser of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Cambodia and the WCS veterinary team to improve the turtles’ diet, especially breeding pairs. For Southern River Terrapins, almost exclusively herbivorous as adults, it was important to ensure sufficient levels of calcium and protein as part of a well-balanced diet. We almost tripled the variety of fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, and fish offered. We also invited our veterinary team to collect and analyze blood samples from the breeding adults and learned that proper blood protein levels significantly increased a turtle’s suitability for breeding. Fast forward a year and the adjustments and analyses are paying off. Not only are females laying eggs, but they are laying better eggs. More nested this year than the previous, with a total of nine headstarted terrapins laying a combined 81 eggs. To incubate the eggs in safety, we carefully moved each clutch to a large refurbished sand mound from which we dug makeshift nests at the same depth as the females deposit their eggs. As each of the 81 eggs passed through my fingers, I was pleased to see that more than half of them were fertile and in good condition, with a hard shell, proper shape, and sufficient weight.

By the end of May we made history again. We not only witnessed young Southern River Terrapins from headstarted

From left to right: This year, 33 Southern River Terrapins hatched at the Koh Kong Reptile Conservation Center, a marked increase in success from last year’s single hatchling; Headstarted Southern River Terrapins grow rapidly in their rearing habitats; Pencil marks on the uppermost surface of freshly laid terrapin eggs denote the orientation in which they were laid; Tim Vuthy and Tun Sarorn display newly hatched terrapins.

females emerge from our sand mound, we witnessed 33 of them successfully hatch, a huge turnaround from the previous year. Today, almost all of them are growing remarkably well and, in less than two decades, they should become an essential component of our conservation strategy for this Critically Endangered turtle.

With the marked improvement from 2021 to 2022, we are optimistic that the following years will yield more nests and hatchlings. Many of these ultimately will be rewilded as juveniles and subadults to the Sre Ambel and other river systems of southwestern Cambodia. For a turtle species we assumed would take 20 years to reach maturity and begin reproducing, it’s one of the highlights of my career to witness captive-reared Southern River Terrapins successfully reproduce by the 15th year of our program. I am optimistic that we can restore a healthy population of Southern River Terrapins in their native habitat. The continued success we have at the KKRCC may prove the lynchpin to save our country’s National Reptile from extinction.

Acknowledgments: We give special thanks to our donors Mandai Nature, Alan & Patricia Koval Foundation, and Turtle Survival Alliance for providing financial and technical support, our grateful thanks to our Government counterparts in the Fisheries Administration for actively supporting our conservation strategy implementation and protection of the species, and to Steven G. Platt, Chris Poyser, and Jordan Gray for their contributions to this article.

Contact:

Sitha Som, Wildlife Conservation Society, Cambodia, #21, Street 21, Tonle Basac, Chamkarmorn, Phnom Penh, Cambodia [ssom@wcs.org]

Funding the Future for Turtles

FWS Launches Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Fund

by Rick Hudson and Earl Possardt

Signed into law in 2004, the Marine Turtle Conservation Act (MTCA) became the sixth multinational species bill passed by the U.S. Congress since 1988 to promote the conservation of endangered species in foreign countries. Because of the well-recognized threats to the survival of tortoises and freshwater turtles, a push began in 2006 to expand the MCTA to include them, with support from multiple quarters including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), IUCN/SSC Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, and the IUCN/SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group. Despite a strong lobbying effort before Congress, the motion failed in 2009. However, efforts to expand the MTCA continued and it was finally amended to include tortoises and freshwater turtles in 2019, thanks to diligent and persistent efforts on the Hill, led by Colin Sheldon of WCS and within FWS’ International Affairs Program by Earl Possardt.

After delays due to multiple factors, including COVID-19, the FWS Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for tortoises and freshwater turtles was finally announced in mid 2021 with an October deadline for receipt of proposals. For Turtle Survival Alliance, this opportunity demanded full attention, to not only secure

support for some of our field projects, but also to demonstrate to FWS how great the need was globally for turtle conservation funding. As the deadline approached, it became an “all hands on deck” moment for Turtle Survival Alliance staff and associates and was an intensely busy time. Chief Operating Officer Andrew Walde and Development Director Amy Carter deserve special recognition for their extraordinary efforts under pressure, encouraging proposals from colleagues within the timeframe and providing support for the demanding process of submitting a grant for federal funding. All that hard work paid off, and roughly six months later we learned that all 11 of our proposals had been funded, totaling $623,800. In all, 25 tortoise and freshwater turtle conservation funding proposals were awarded in the first year of the program; while this represents a substantial investment in tortoises and freshwater turtles, it only “scratches the surface” of what is really needed to address the growing threats to this group. According to the IUCN Red List, over 50% of tortoises and freshwater turtles are under threat of extinction—one of the highest of any vertebrate group— brought on by years of exploitation, and now intensified by the illegal wildlife trade.

Presently at least 40% of all new appropriations over $1.5 million must be spent on tortoises and freshwater turtles, which means that this fund must continue to grow if these animals are to receive the level of funding needed to make progress toward conservation and recovery of the species most at risk. FWS’ goal is to grow support both financially and administratively such that it can provide long-term support to sustain existing programs and become partners and pillars of support in these efforts. Building FWS partnerships is a highly impactful strategy, and the intent is to be able to support newly emerging high-priority projects— some of them long overdue—as funding increases. This underscores the importance of significant and steady increases in congressional appropriations to add new money to the Marine Turtle Conservation Act. Success will require a well-planned and concerted effort on behalf of the turtle conservation community, educating lawmakers on Capitol Hill and making our case for why tortoises and freshwater turtles matter, too.

Contact: Rick Hudson, Turtle Survival Alliance, 1030 Jenkins Road, Suite D, Charleston, SC 29407 [rhudson@turtlesurvival.org]

Arpita Dutta; Upamanyu Chakraborty

From left to right: The Black Softshell Turtle was formerly considered Extinct in the Wild. USFWS funding will help restore wild populations in the Brahmaputra River basin; Red-crowned Roofed Turtles, like these females being fed by Rinku Kumar at the Kukrail Gharial and Turtle Rehabilitation Center, are a focal species for prioritized conservation efforts in India.

2021 Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Fund Projects

Target Species Project Name Location Lead Partner

Endangered softshell turtles including the Indian NarrowHeaded Softshell Turtle, Indian Softshell Turtle and Indian Peacock Softshell Turtle

Reducing the illegal trade in softshell turtles in West Bengal, India

Rote Island Snake-necked Turtle Conservation of the critically endangered Rote Island Snake-necked Turtle

Southern River Terrapin Conservation of the critically endangered Southern River Terrapin in southern Cambodia

Multiple Supporting civil society to reduce illegal consumption and trade of endangered tortoises and freshwater turtles in China

Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle Program for the sustainable conservation of the Dahl’s Toad-headed Turtle (Carranchina turtle) in Colombia

Bolson Tortoise Development of a cost-effective monitoring program for the Bolson Tortoise using drones and deep learning

Pancake Tortoise

Surveying the critically endangered Pancake Tortoise on three protected wildlife conservancies in Kenya to establish population range extension and develop a longterm conservation strategy

Nubian Flapshell Turtle Assessing the distribution of the critically endangered Nubian Flapshell Turtle and enhancing community capacity for conservation in northern Uganda

Red-crowned Roofed Turtle

Strengthening captive conservation colonies and pilot reintroduction of the Redcrowned Roofed turtle in N. India

Multiple Strengthening on-site triage and rehabilitation program for rescued turtles in N. India

Central American River Turtle

Northern River Terrapin

Evaluating the efficacy of headstarting the critically endangered Central American River Turtle in Belize

Determining the survival and dispersal of headstarted Northern River Terrapin, the most threatened turtle in India

Black Softshell Turtle Operationalization of the Black Softshell Turtle vision plan 2030 in Assam, northeast India

Asian Giant Tortoise A road to recovery for Asian Giant Tortoises in India and Bangladesh

Geometric Tortoise Headstarting the Geometric Tortoise to sustain and enhance its last major population

Southern River Terrapin Conservation of the Southern River Terrapin in Malaysia through local community participation

Multiple Safeguarding three of Madagascar’s critically endangered chelonian species

Magdalena River Turtle

Community-based conservation and ex situ management of the endemic Magdalena River turtle in Colombia

Burmese Peacock Softshell Turtle Conservation of Burmese Peacock Softshell Turtle

Asian Giant Softshell Turtle Recovering critically endangered Asian Giant Softshell Turtle (AGST) along the Xe Bang Hiang River, Lao PDR

Multiple Conservation of priority tortoise and freshwater turtle species in Vietnam and Laos

Multiple Reducing threats to survival, and population monitoring of nine Mexican chelonians through a community scholarship program

Hoge’s Side-necked Turtle

Radiated Tortoise

Home’s Hinge-back Tortoise

Ensuring conservation of remnant populations of Hoge’s Side-Necked Turtle in the only protected area for the species in southeast Brazil and surrounding areas

Reversing the decline of Madagascar’s critically endangered Radiated Tortoise

Conserving the critically endangered Home’s Hinge-back Tortoise in Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa

Colombia Fundación Futuro Verde y Social

Mexico Resi Solutions, LLC

Kenya Lewa Wildlife Conservancy USA

Uganda Turtle Survival Alliance

India Turtle Survival Alliance

India Turtle Survival Alliance

Belize Turtle Survival Alliance

India Turtle Survival Alliance

India Turtle Survival Alliance

India/Bangladesh Turtle Survival Alliance

South Africa Chelonian Conservation Center

Malaysia Turtle Survival Alliance

Madagascar Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

Colombia Wildlife Conservation Society

Myanmar Fauna and Flora International

Laos World Wildlife Fund

Vietnam/Laos

Indo-Myanmar Conservation

Mexico Turtle Survival Alliance

Brazil Turtle Survival Alliance

Madagascar Turtle Survival Alliance

Cote d’Ivoire

African Aquatic Conservation Fund

PARTNER FEATURE:

Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz (AGA) e.V.

An Interview with Birgit

Braun

How did you become involved in conservation?

After I had already done voluntary work in nature conservation as a schoolgirl, I wanted to do this professionally later on. For this reason, I studied biology with a focus on nature conservation. This was followed by postgraduate studies in environmental protection. I started my career at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Germany in the area of species conservation. In 2007, my path led me to the Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz (AGA). After some time, I discovered that a film about the slaughter of sea turtles—which had touched me deeply as a child and awakened my fascination for turtles—had come from AGA. So, for me, a circle has virtually closed.

Can you tell us more about AGA’s history and mission?

Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz (AGA) e.V. (Action Campaign for Endangered Species) emerged from the “Save the Turtles” campaign, which itself was initiated in 1981 by private individuals against the cruel slaughter of turtles. AGA became a charity in 1986. Today, AGA is still working for the conservation of endangered animals and plant species and their

habitats. It operates internationally to protect and preserve nature, to raise environmental awareness, and to prevent the destruction of the livelihood of humans, animals and plants. Thanks to a close and fruitful cooperation with competent local partner organizations, species conservation projects can be implemented directly and sustainably.

What first attracted you to Turtle Survival Alliance?

When we learned about the confiscation of more than 4,000 Philippine Forest Turtles (Siebenrockiella leytensis) in 2015, we were in contact with HansDieter Philippen from the Marginata magazine. He was also the Vice-Chairman of the European Turtle Alliance and told us about the work of Turtle Survival Alliance after the confiscation and the urgent need for financial help. We were impressed how quickly so many experts from around the world could be activated to examine and care for the turtles as well as to organise housing for so many animals and start the preparation to release the turtles back into the wild. We were happy to help and provided financial support within our scope. It is always important for us to help as long as help is needed, i.e., until the turtles could be released again, which in this case was after a few months.

You have become one of Turtle Survival Alliance’s most committed supporters since 2018, particularly of conservation efforts on behalf of Radiated Tortoises (Astrochelys radiata). How have you galvanized support to save this iconic Malagasy species?

Due to AGA’s history, which began as the “Save the Turtles” campaign, AGA has many turtle-lovers among its supporters.

The project to protect radiated tortoises and our fundraising campaign, therefore, received great support. For example, we regularly receive special support from a “donation flea market” organized by turtle friends on Facebook. They donate part of the proceeds to protect the radiated tortoises. Further, we also applied and were selected to be included in the annual 24 Good Deeds Advent Calendar in 2021, which generated significant support for Radiated Tortoises. We are very happy that we are able to rely on long-standing supporters, as well as to open up new funding opportunities.

What led you to sustain your support for Turtle Survival Alliance?

It is one of the unwritten rules of AGA: we do not want to help only in cases of emergency, like after the big confiscations in 2018. It´s one of our main concerns to support our partners until a project is finished or at least as long as our help is needed and financially possible. We´re very aware of the work that follows a confiscation. And, it´s not only the first aid which needs to be supported, but also the long road of recovery until animals can be released back into the wild. For AGA it´s a matter of the heart to walk this road with our partner organizations.

Behler Turtle Conservation Award

Prestigious award honors Vivian Páez in 2022

by Brian Bock, Anders Rhodin,

and Rick

Hudson

This year’s 17th Annual Behler Turtle Conservation Award honors Dr. Vivian P. Páez of Colombia. The award, considered the “Nobel Prize” of turtle conservation and biology, honors and celebrates extraordinary dedication and influential leadership in the international chelonian community.

Vivian was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Growing up, Vivian developed a passion for the natural world, which led her to study Biology in college, first at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and then at the Universidad de los Andes, where she obtained her degree in 1987.

Needing more experience conducting field work, she took a fellowship as field assistant at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama studying nesting ecology of green iguanas. There she also met her eventual husband, Brian Bock. While collecting hatchling iguanas at a study site one day, she found some hatchling turtles, as a female Uhrig’s Slider (Trachemys venusta uhrigi) had also nested at the site. These hatchling turtles had a profound effect on her and, when her fellowship ended, she decided to continue her education by pursuing graduate school to study turtle ecology in Colombia. However, her fellowship mentor,

Jennifer Del Rio

Stan Rand, while encouraging her academic interests, cautioned that turtles were not considered “model organisms” in the area of reptile ecology.

Undaunted, Vivian entered the doctoral program at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, USA, to study turtle ecology. Although her English language skills were initially weak, her English rapidly improved and, by the end of her graduate career, she was awarded the Graduate Student of the Year award of the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.

While Scott Moody played a key role in Vivian’s academic formation, he felt that he should not independently direct a doctoral thesis on turtle ecology, not being a turtle biologist himself. He advised Vivian to send her doctoral research proposal on the nesting ecology of Yellow-spotted River Turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) to Richard Vogt, who responded with a critique of her proposal that also included an invitation. Vogt invited her to participate (free of charge) in an upcoming graduate course he was offering on field methods for the study of turtles in Mexico. Vivian accepted his offer and spent two weeks in Mexico learning how to trap, mark, stomach pump, and otherwise study all aspects of freshwater turtle ecology in the field. This trip marked the beginning of a life-long relationship of mutual respect, collaboration, and friendship between Richard and Vivian that had as its common ground their interests in freshwater turtle ecology.

Vivian then returned to Colombia where she obtained government support for field work with her now-husband Brian on the Caquetá River and Cauhinarí Natural National Park. With Colombian support in hand, they obtained matching funding thanks to John Thorbjarnarson of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. During the project, Vivian and Brian also were invited to attend the seminal International Turtle Congress in Purchase, New York, where they first met and befriended Olga Castaño-Mora, the grande dame of Colombia turtle biology, as well as many other important figures in the international turtle research and conservation arena, including Anders Rhodin, Peter Pritchard, and John Behler.

After finishing her doctoral thesis, Vivian was offered a teaching position in the Instituto de Biología of the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. Far from the Colombian Amazon, it became more feasible for her to focus on turtles in the nearby Magdalena River. She also founded the Grupo Herpetológico de Antioquia and the Museo de Herpetología of the Universidad de Antioquia. During her long academic career at the Universidad de Antioquia, she addressed turtle topics as varied as temperature-dependent sex determination, maternal effects and other aspects of nesting ecology, habitat use, growth rates, movement patterns, demographic monitoring and matrix projections, population genetics, niche modelling and climate change, management methods, heavy metal accumulation, and ethnozoology. She also mentored many undergraduate and

graduate thesis students, and saw many of them obtain positions in other Colombian universities, NGOs, and government environmental institutions.

Vivian has also had a positive impact on national and international aspects of turtle biology and conservation. At the national level, she organized four symposia on turtle biology at national professional meetings, and was elected vice-president of the Asociación Colombiana de Herpetologia (ACH) in 2006 and president in 2010. As president of ACH she organized a workshop in 2011 to produce a revised conservation action plan for Colombian turtles. One of the goals was to synthesize current knowledge of the continental turtle species in Colombia, and she spearheaded a collaborative editing effort that resulted in the 2012 book Biología y Conservación de las Tortugas Continentales de Colombia. A follow-up workshop was held in 2015, this time along with the Colombian Environmental Ministry, where an update to the last action plan was produced and approved officially by the Colombian government. Vivian also was an editor of the 2015 Libro Rojo de Reptiles de Colombia to classify reptiles in Colombia at the national level using IUCN criteria. Her most recent publication is an updated checklist of the turtles of Colombia with annotated analysis of their distributions in Colombia and conservation status.

At the International level, Vivian has been a long-term member of the Steering Committee of the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, a member of the Review Board of the Turtle Conservation Fund, and more recently also of the Congdon-Dickson Turtle Ecology Fund. She has been an editor for Chelonian Conservation and Biology for many years, and more recently has taken on the role of assistant editor for turtles for Herpetological Conservation and Biology and Revista Latinoamericana de Herpetologia. She has recently accepted the task of becoming the new IUCN Red List Coordinator of the TFTSG.

In 2013, she received the first Sabin Turtle Conservation Prize for her career dedicated to turtle research and conservation. The Behler Turtle Conservation Award now represents another major honor that highlights her career-long dedication to turtle research and conservation of Colombian turtles. She is an exceptional leader in our global community and represents the growing importance of turtle conservation efforts focused on South America.

Throughout her career, Brian has been at Vivian’s side, collaborating with her on turtle research and conservation, as well as raising their daughter, Jessica, who is now a college student entering her senior year studying biological conservation and environmental education. Jessica and Brian could not be prouder of Vivian for this Behler Award recognition, as are both Rick and Anders as they’ve followed her career and watched her accomplishments grow over the years. Congratulations to her from the entire turtle conservation community.

Pritchard Turtle Conservation Award

Recognizing lifetime achievements, 2022: Robert Zappalorti & Ronald Brooks

by Anders G.J. Rhodin and Rick Hudson

After the passing of Peter Pritchard in 2020, the Behler Award Committee honored his legacy by renaming our previous Turtle Conservation Appreciation Awards to the Pritchard Turtle Conservation Lifetime Achievement Awards. These awards are presented to notable individuals in special recognition of their lifetime achievements and long-term impact on turtle conservation or biology.

This year, the 3rd annual Pritchard Awards honor the lifetime achievements of Bob Zappalorti of the United States and Ron Brooks of Canada. We recognize and honor them for their important contributions to turtle conservation, ecology, and natural history.

Robert T. Zappalorti started his career in 1964 as a reptile keeper at the Staten Island Zoo in New York. There, he initiated intensive studies on Bog Turtles in New Jersey, which have continued for almost 50 years. In 1977, he founded Herpetological Associates, Inc., an environmental consulting company that provides reptile and amphibian surveys, adverse impact analyses of development projects, and produces mitigation and conservation plans. His most important lifetime contributions have been his long-term, in-depth studies on Bog Turtles. This research uncovered many se -

cretive behaviors of these turtles including mating and nesting habits, ecology, as well as defining their home range, diet and foraging behaviors, activity periods, and hibernation. We honor him for these studies that have helped focus conservation efforts on this Critically Endangered species. Ronald J. Brooks is Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada. He retired in 2006 after 36 years of teaching integrative biology. His work on turtles has focused on the ecology, life history, and conservation of Canada’s populations of Snapping Turtles, Midland Painted Turtles, Wood Turtles, Blanding’s Turtles, Eastern Musk Turtles, Spiny Softshells, and Spotted Turtles. Most of these studies, often in collaboration with colleagues, were at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, where he was Director from 1983 through 2001. He is especially proud of his work on the conservation of Canada’s turtles, and specifically that Snapping Turtles are no longer considered “vermin” or “game species.” Instead, they are regarded as a species at risk, with widespread popular public support for their protection. We honor him for his important work on turtle ecology and conservation in Canada, and also for mentoring and educating many students.

Robert Zappalorti

Ronald Brooks

TURTLE CONSERVATION FUND

Nesting Sites of the Nearly Extinct Nubian Flapshell Turtle

by Luca Luiselli and Gift Simon Demaya

The Nubian Flapshell Turtle (Cyclanorbis elegans) is a Critically Endangered large softshell turtle that historically occurred in large rivers of the Sahelo-Sudanese belt from northern Ghana to South Sudan. It is now restricted to a few remnant populations along the White Nile in South Sudan and northern Uganda. In South Sudan, its eggs are collected and the meat of adults is eaten locally or illegally sold in markets. Females nest between late July and mid-October in sandy river banks along smaller tributaries of the White Nile in areas with abundant vegetation. Several females appear to nest communally in the same sites and seem to return to the same nesting site annually. This unusual reproductive pattern for softshell turtles (more common in large hardshelled riverine turtles) appears to be one of the reasons for the extirpation of this species from most of its range, as it may have facilitated harvest of adult females and eggs from known nesting sites.

From 2002–2022, TCF has funded 323 of 884 submitted proposals, for total disbursements of $1.38 million; average awards were $4,271, with projects conducted in 60 nations. TCF has provided four grants for work on Nubian Flapshell Turtle, including this most recent one, for a total of $16,500.

With continued support from Turtle Conservation Fund (TCF), we have monitored the number of females coming to nest in two previously discovered nesting sites. These are the only known nesting sites of the Nubian Flapshell Turtle. In August 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, local informants reported that five females had nested at these two sites. Sadly, the females were killed and their meat was illegally sold to Chinese expats. The alleged perpetrators justified their actions as due to economic hardship and COVID-related unemployment. The following year, we returned and observed two females nesting at one of the sites, but did not see any at the second site. We also found tracks of several nesting crawls, but could not locate any nests or eggs. We observed tracks in several locations throughout a 330-meter-long strip of river bank, suggesting that the nesting site may actually be larger than previously estimated. We have launched an awareness campaign with the local community, which is now serving to minimize the risks to nesting females. This year, with additional support from Turtle Survival Alliance, we have been monitoring the beaches daily since mid-June. We are hopeful and confident that some females will return to these nesting beaches and that their eggs can be located and actively protected. The future and continued existence of this species hangs in the balance.

Contact: Luca Luiselli [l.luiselli@ideccngo.org]; Gift Simon Demaya [gftsimon@yahoo.co.uk]; TCF: Hugh R. Quinn [DoubleHQ@aol.com]; Anders G.J. Rhodin [rhodincrf@aol.com]

From left to right: John Sebit Benasio, Luca Luiselli, and Gift Simon Demaya lead the surveys and conservation efforts for Nubian Flapshell Turtle in South Sudan and Uganda.

The Path Forward

A strategic vision for global conservation

by Hugh Quinn and Rick Hudson

When a small group of members of Turtle Survival Alliance’s Field Conservation Committee gathered at Board Member Tim Gregory’s home in California, it was the beginning of an arduous two-year process that would ultimately define how we prioritize species for conservation and where we will focus our efforts around the globe. It was March 2020: we will never forget that moment, the weekend that the world abruptly began to shut down and our daily routines would change in ways we could not have imagined.

If there was a silver lining to COVID-19 in this case, it was that it allowed us time to focus our efforts while our normally hectic travel schedules were disrupted. With the substantial and rapid growth of our global conservation efforts over the past few years, it was apparent that a successful path forward required a new strategic conservation plan. The Field Conservation Committee scheduled weekly Zoom meetings, devoting considerable time to refining our prioritization criteria, defining the various types of initiatives we engage in, and developing our measures of success (see sidebar).

Our goal is to assure that wild populations of target species persist. This requires conserving as many viable populations as necessary to re-establish species across suitable or restored habitat within historic ranges. Further, it is critical that populations be large enough that the integrity and functional role of each species within its ecosystem is restored. We also developed a plan format that includes—among other things—a thorough consideration of population-level effects of climate change.

First, we identified top priority target species, starting with all 78 IUCN Red Listed Critically Endangered (CR) and Tortoise and Freshwater Specialist Group (TFTSG) provisional Red Listed Critically Endangered tortoise and freshwater turtle taxa. In some cases, the committee further refined species selection using the recently developed Conservation Needs Index (CNI). The 78 target CR taxa (species and subspecies) collectively ranged across 52 countries. As Turtle Survival Alliance lacks financial resources to establish initiatives in each one, an efficient way to protect as many target species as possible was needed. We began the selection process with the use of a simple greedy algorithm, which chose the minimum number of countries that embraced all target species, then further

Protecting a key population of Crowned River Turtles (Hardella thurji) along the Sarju River of North India’s Terai Arc Landscape is a high conservation priority for the Turtle Survival Alliance India Program.

Upamanyu Chakraborty

refined the list through discussions among the committee and other experts in the field. The result was the selection of 21 range countries in which to continue or establish initiatives representing all target species.

To implement this strategic, truly global, conservation plan, Turtle Survival Alliance will need additional field personnel. We identified future needs for: a Conservation and Science Director, three Deputy Regional Directors— likely for Asia, South America, and Africa, a Mexico Country Director, and, finally, two conservation biologists—a Geneticist and a Population Viability Analysis Specialist.

Ultimately, this plan, updated annually and prioritized to secure the critical resources to implement it, will serve multiple functions and target audiences. We envision that it will provide, when combined with our Turtle Survival Center’s Animal Management Plan, a roadmap that demonstrates our commitment to protect and restore wild populations of turtles and tortoises.

We wish to recognize the dedicated commitment of Turtle Survival Alliance’s Field Conservation Committee: Allison Alberts, Dave Collins, Marc Dupuis-Desormeaux, Tim Gregory, John Iverson, Cristina Jones, Lonnie McCaskill, Russ Mittermeier, Hugh Quinn, Anders Rhodin, Andrew Walde, and Co-Chairs Brian Horne and Rick Hudson.

Turtle Survival Alliance Field Conservation Strategic Plan

Goal: Ensure that wild populations of Critically Endangered species persist

Objectives:

1. Define priority species for global conservation initiatives

2. Identify countries to maximize conservation impact

3. Provide direction to initiatives in forming species-specific recovery plans

4. Develop metrics to evaluate impact

5. Coordinate efforts among global conservation initiatives

6. Serve as a fundraising tool

7. Centralize information for members, partners, and others

Criteria for country selection:

• presence of target species

• government permission

• ability to enlist partners

• logistical feasibility

• availability of key personnel

• safety considerations

• financial feasibility

• lack of existing effective conservation initiatives

A goal of the Turtle Survival Alliance conservation strategy is to expand the number of wild Pancake Tortoise (Malacochersus tornieri) populations that are safe from poaching. The Lewa Conservancy in Kenya supports protected habitat and guard staff are learning to census and monitor tortoise populations.

Results:

• 21 range countries to continue or establish initiatives for 78 CR species

• 14 with existing Turtle Survival Alliance initiatives [Bangladesh, Belize, Cambodia, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan, USA, and Vietnam]

• 7 considered for future investment [Australia, Brazil, China, Philippines, Seychelles, South Africa, and Timor-Leste]

Conservation Initiative Types/Definitions:

Range Country Program: we employ in-country staff and it is branded as a Turtle Survival Alliance-led or jointly-led program

Partnership: we provide advice, strategic planning, and technical assistance, and it is branded as partner-led

Project: we provide funding to another individual or organization, it may or may not be branded as Turtle Survival Alliance-led, and it has the potential to evolve into a Partnership or Range Country Program

Virtual Outreach

Engaging people of all ages is foundational to the survival of turtles and tortoises. At Turtle Survival Alliance, we understand the direct and indirect impacts education has on conservation. The Turtle Survival Alliance Virtual Outreach Experience provides opportunities to reach audiences of all sizes, anywhere with a computer and a camera. From elementary to college and university classes, to civic groups, nonprofits, and activity clubs, we cater virtual learning opportunities to your audience. We strive to connect with the curiosity and enthusiasm in viewers across the world, creating catalytic moments for those eager to learn. We welcome you to be the next to join us in the exchange of turtle knowledge!

“Each February students from Elgin High School (Illinois) organize a series of webinars that allow students from all over the world to interact with scientists, authors, artists, filmmakers, and grassroots organizations around the importance of biodiversity. Turtle Survival Alliance has been a participant favorite since 2019, reaching thousands of students from around the world. Each year they prepare a new presentation to engage the students around solutions to protect our world’s turtle populations and their habitats. Partnering with Turtle Survival Alliance has provided our teachers, students, and families with opportunities to learn about all the amazing turtles and tortoises and how our community plays a role in their protection.”

-Debbie McMullen, National Biodiversity Teach-In

Pour Me Another

Saving a Lot of Turtles in 2022

Our Drink Beer. Save Turtles.® conservation collaborations had their biggest year yet! There were 25 events this year that brought many people together to raise their glasses for turtle conservation. We want to give a huge “THANK YOU!” to the 20 breweries, 5 taprooms, 12 chapters of the American Association of Zookeepers, several zoological and herpetological societies, fantastic volunteers, and awesome attendees that gathered in 14 states across the country to raise more than $28,000 so far this year for Turtle Survival Alliance’s mission of protecting and restoring wild turtle populations!

Drink Beer. Save Turtles.® events are quickly becoming annual family favorites at breweries everywhere. Ten dedicated turtle beers were crafted by partner brewers this year! These beverages often have accompanying can art and merchandise produced locally that helps give the events a strong local following. More local chapters of the American Association of Zookeepers are partnering with us and breweries in their cities every year to celebrate turtles! If your AAZK Chapter or brewery wants to learn more about hosting Drink Beer. Save Turtles.® events, reach out to David Hedrick at dhedrick@turtlesurvival.org and let’s talk beer and turtles!

Become a TSA Member

Join or renew as a Turtle Survival Alliance Member today and make a difference in our global efforts to protect more than 100 turtle and tortoise species. Receive exclusive member benefits including our annual magazine, monthly e-newsletters, special merchandise and event discounts, and access to opportunities created specifically for our members.

Your Turtle Survival Alliance membership will directly benefit our work, advance our mission, and ensure that wild turtle populations persist for generations to come.

Learn more and become a Turtle Survival Alliance member at turtlesurvival.org/membership. For any questions regarding membership options or your current membership, contact Chelsea Rinn, Development Coordinator, at crinn@turtlesurvival.org.

Leave a Lasting Legacy

Turtle Survival Alliance’s Legacy Circle honors dedicated individuals who want to extend their support well beyond their lifetime.

By making a planned or legacy gift, you can ensure a safe future for turtles and tortoises around the world. Provide for Turtle Survival Alliance’s future by naming us as a beneficiary in your estate plans and be certain that we can continue working toward our vision of a planet where turtles thrive in the wild, for years to come.

For additional information or to explore the benefits of gift and estate planning (including through life income gifts, gift annuities, mutual funds, real estate, life insurance, and other planned gifts), please contact Amy Carter, Director of Development, at acarter@turtlesurvival.org.

Faces of Turtle Conservation

Robin de Bled

Software Developer and Turtle Survival Alliance Member

GUELPH, ONTARIO, CANADA

Was there a defining moment that inspired you to care about turtle and tortoise conservation?

I had always considered myself an environmentalist but until about fifteen years ago I wasn’t particularly aware of the threats to turtles and tortoises. Then I watched a documentary called The Chances of the World Changing that played on my local PBS station and it had a profound effect on me. I decided that rather than getting depressed about the state of the world I had to get involved in some way to help these beautiful, timeless creatures.

What do you want your lasting impact for turtle conservation to be?

Turtle populations are at critical risk right now and action today can save them for the future. If all my efforts to educate people, to raise money from friends and family, to donate as much as I can every year protects just one species from extinction I’ll be overjoyed. Long after I’m gone, wouldn’t it be wonderful if something I did helped an entire species to survive? I can’t think of a better legacy.

You’ve been a supporter of Turtle Survival Alliance for many years; what keeps you engaged with turtle conservation work?

I’ve seen the impact of the TSA’s work over the years and it’s incredible. The threats remain as big as ever, but there are successes that give me hope for a better future. Hope is infectious – it makes me want to do more, to see more progress, to believe that the world can be better, and that I can be an agent of that change in some small way.

Do you have a favorite turtle and why? I really don’t. Some are cute, some are pretty, but aren’t they all just so beautiful and fascinating? Picking a favorite is impossible.

Mónica Nieto-Vera

Biologist; Master of Science student at Universidad Nacional de Colombia; member at Wildlife Conservation and Management Group, Institute of Natural Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Colombia BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

How did you first get involved in turtle research in Colombia?

My first time engaging in turtle research was doing a project in my first semester of undergraduate studies. In it I reviewed the literature on the life history of sea turtles. Later in my biology degree studies, I conducted field research on the reproductive ecology of the Giant South American River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa) in the Meta River in the Orinoquía region of Colombia.

Tell us about your work with the Giant South American River Turtle.

My work began in 2015 when I researched its nesting ecology on the beaches of the Meta River to obtain my undergraduate degree. Then, in 2020, I started my master’s research on the ecology and movements of reproductive female Giant South American River Turtles. This was also done on the Meta River, but in a larger section (~200 km; 124 mi). We installed acoustic transmitters on the shells of 15 females, from which we were able to obtain information on their movements after nesting. After following them for 18 months, we found that the females move independently and that in one day they can move from 1-13

km (0.6-8 mi). In a month’s time, some of them traveled about 38 km (24 mi), and, over the duration of the study, one female moved 107 km (67 mi)—the greatest distance travelled. We also found that, during low-water of the dry seasons, females move in the main channel of the river, but during high-water of the rainy seasons, they move to tributaries. This may occur due to the high availability of preferred resources in these areas (food, shelter, sites with lower currents, etc.).

What’s your most memorable moment working with turtles in the field?

My most memorable moment with the Charapas (as we call Giant South American River Turtles in Colombia) was the day I re-located a female turtle that I had not located in two months of acoustic telemetry. As night was falling after a 14-hour day of searching for turtles under the hot sun and sultry heat of summer in the Orinoquía, I heard the sound of her transmitter. I was so excited that my heart was pounding out of my chest. That day the Charapas showed me that just when you start to lose hope, life gives you a shot of faith. I still remember the “bit bit bit” sound of the transmitter, and I feel joy.

This year was your first time attending the Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles. Can you tell us about your experience at the Symposium?

In a few words: it was a dream come true. To be surrounded by great turtle “rock stars,” to be able to talk to them, to know their stories, but most exciting of all, to put a face to those authors of great scientific articles. I almost fainted when the day to present my work arrived. However, my nerves were meaningless because all the attendees were very respectful, kind, and understanding with respect to the language barrier. What I will never forget is the support, show of emotion, and recognition I received from the Symposium attendees. It is something that I have not felt with the academic public in my country. I really encourage all Latinos to present their papers and apply for the travel grants offered by Turtle Survival Alliance to attend the annual symposium—it is an incredible experience.

Thank You to Our Donors!

We wish to acknowledge the individuals and organizations who donated to support Turtle Survival Alliance between 1 October 2021 and 30 September 2022.

$100,000 +

Alan and Patricia Koval Foundation

Anonymous

Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

Division of International Conservation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Gregory Family Charitable Fund

USAID

U.S. Department of the Interior

$50,000 - $99,999

Aktionsgemeinschaft Artenschutz e.V.

Zoo Knoxville

$25,000 - $49,999

Association of Zoos & Aquariums

Columbus Zoo and Aquarium

Dennler Family Fund

Fort Worth Zoo

Ocean Park Conservation Foundation

People’s Trust for Endangered Species

San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

Tortuga Foundation

$10,000 - $24,999

Anonymous

Barbara B. Bonner Charitable Fund

Jacqueline Cogswell

Dallas Zoo

Desert Tortoise Council, Inc.

Detroit Zoo

Fondation Segré

David Allan Hutchison

Indianapolis Zoo

John Iverson

Meredith Keen/Meredith Keen Charitable Gift Fund

Mandai Nature

Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund

Sandra J. Moss

The Marjean and Richard Brooks Family Fund

Edward Neil/Ed Neil Charitable Fund

Prince Bernhard Nature Fund

Riverbanks Zoo & Garden

Brett C. Stearns

Stuart Salenger Foundation Inc.

TC Energy Foundation

Roy Young

Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc.

$5,000 - $9,999

William A. Ahrens

Animal Survival International

Deborah Behler

Birmingham Zoo

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo

Conservation Leadership Programme

Joseph Cook

Christian Fischer

Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo

William and Kathleen Holmstrom

IUCN Save Our Species

Jill Jollay

Milwaukee County Zoo

John D. Mitchell

Nashville Zoo at Grassmere

Natural Encounters Conservation Fund, Inc.

Re:wild

Rufford Foundation

Santa Fe College Teaching Zoo

Sedgwick County Zoo

St. Louis Zoo

The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation

Turtle Conservation Fund

Virginia Safari Park, Inc.

$1,000 - $4,999

AAZK Saint Louis Zoo

Allison C. Alberts / Alberts Family Charitable Fund

Amazon

American Association of Zoo Veterinarians

Andrew Sabin Family Foundation

Audubon Zoo

AZA Chelonian Taxon Advisory Group

Baton Rouge Zoo

Guillermo A. A. Bernal

Brian Bolton

Brodsky Charitable Foundation Trust

Canteen, LLC

Jack and Jan Cato

Chattanooga Zoo

Chelonian Research Foundation

Karrie Chen

Chuck’s Hop Shop

Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden

David Collins

Combined Federal Campaign

Justin Congdon and Nancy Dickson

Jack Daigneault

Robert Davey

Eric Day

Robin de Bled

Dickerson Park Zoo

Tatyana Elefante

Elizabeth C. Bonner Foundation

Elmwood Park Zoo

Fort Worth Zoo

Fresno Chaffee Zoo

Gail Gazda/Gazda Charitable Fund

Nina Geneson

Paul Gerard III

Elizabeth Glassco

Cris Hagen

Michael Hasselbring

Holohil Systems Ltd.

Rick Hudson

IUCN Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group

William Jacobs

Nancy Karraker

Robert and Denise Krause/Krause Family Charitable

Foundation

Paul Licht

Jacquelyn Lindner

Low Tide Brewing

Luther Capital Management

Julia Maitre

Lance Paden

Marin Community Foundation

Brandon Martin

Mazuri Exotic Animal Nutrition

Sy Montgomery

Moody Gardens, Inc.

North Carolina Chapter AAZK

North Carolina Zoological Society

Nurtured by Nature

Bonnie L. Raphael, DVM, DACZM

Dianne Render

Anders Rhodin

San Antonio Zoological Society

Senate Avenue Brewing Company

David Shapiro

Kate Slavens Sonotronics

Spoonwood Brewing LLC

Linda Stein

Michael Stepniewski

Tailgate Brewery LLC

Tennessee Aquarium

The Ken and Claudia Giving Fund

The Maryland Zoo

The Schechter Foundation

Tucson Herpetological Society

Turtle Conservancy

Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center

Andrew Walde

Bob Walker

WCS/Bronx Zoo

Bruce Weber

Bruce Weissgold

Woodland Park Zoo

Diane Yoshimi

In-Kind

Fort Worth Zoo

Limehouse Produce

Mazuri Exotic Animal Nutrition

Mepkin Abbey

Lance Paden

St. Louis Zoo

Salesforce

SWCA Environmental Consultants

Wildlife Conservation Society

Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc.

Thanks to the generous support of Turtle Survival Alliance donors and partners, we are rewilding turtles and tortoises, like this Radiated Tortoise in Madagascar, to their natural habitats.