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Originally appears in the Winter 2018 issue.
People are fascinated with freshwater turtles; they are such unusual creatures with their hard shells made up of ribs and vertebrae and they have such curious behaviors. These mostly benign animals (Snapping turtles can certainly seem threatening and they ferociously defend themselves if cornered or captured.) live mostly in the water, yet they must surface to breathe. How long can they rest? How long can they hibernate? What happens to turtles that live in really cold climates? (Some turtles freeze, but don’t die.) Freshwater aquatic turtles have been ubiquitous in wetland habitats all over the world, yet today they face many threats. In fact, they are the most threatened vertebrate in the world.
Turtles in many countries face the following problems: 1) harvest for the pet, medicine and food trades (Turtles are exported to mostly Asian countries, especially China.); 2) habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation (from deforestation, conversion to intensive agriculture, residential and commercial development, transmigration areas, and logging); 3) water pollution (siltation and pollutants from sewage, fertilizers, agriculture, and manufacturing); 4) competition from invasive turtle species (including releases from the pet trade); 5) road mortality; 6) disease; 7) drought; and 8) predators. In this paper, we focus specifically on turtle harvest and turtles as invasive species. The purpose of this article is to share our science/education work on turtles in the United States (North Carolina) and in Indonesia (Bengkulu, Sumatra), and to encourage others to teach about the plight that freshwater turtles face.
In order to most easily understand the situation, we’ll look at one native U.S. turtle — the red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans). When today’s adults were young children, lots of school classrooms and homes had pet baby red-eared sliders in small turtle bowls. However, small pet turtles grew up to be larger turtles (if they were lucky…very, very lucky) and many small children got food poisoning (Salmonella) from holding the baby turtles or playing in the turtle’s water and then sticking their hands in their mouths without first washing. An estimated 300,000 cases of Salmonella occurred annually before the Food and Drug Administration enacted a 1975 law forbidding the sale of turtles with a top shell (carapace) length less than four inches (10 cm) long. So, baby turtles in U.S. school classrooms are now a thing of the past.
Some lucky baby red-eared sliders grew larger (too large for their owners) and were released into local outdoor habitats — whether they belonged there or not — and now these sliders are not only an invasive species in many states in the U.S., but they are now considered one of the world’s worst invasive species. Red-eared sliders, native to the Mississippi drainage from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, are relatively inexpensive, small, and easy to maintain. In Washington, they are threatening the vanishing Pacific pond turtle. In the southeastern U.S., they are compromising the genetic integrity of yellow-bellied sliders by interbreeding with them. They are banned from countries in the European Union because of the damage they do to European pond turtles, but in the Mississippi drainage, the one place red-eared sliders belong, they are in decline.1
Red-eared sliders have also found their way to Southeast Asia, and are a very popular invasive species in Indonesia. This “pet” turtle can be found in all Sumatran provinces, including Bengkulu, and is sometimes found in residential neighborhoods because owners became bored with the animals and released them into the natural environment.
“The Chinese consumed their own turtles long ago, but in the late 1980s, when their currency became interchangeable on the world market, they began consuming everyone else’s” turtles as well. All 65 species of turtles in Southeast Asia, a quarter of the world’s total turtle species, are in grave danger.1
Not only are native U.S. wild red-eared sliders caught and exported to China (They are one of the targeted species.), but red-eared sliders are farmed commercially in China in quantities of tens to hundreds of thousands of animals annually. They are predominantly farmed to supply the pet trade, but farmed Trachemys scripta elegans have been appearing in East Asian food markets in increasing quantities.2
The 29 native turtles and tortoises in Indonesia are important components of the country’s biodiversity, but during the last decade, the turtle trade has increased considerably. Some of this trade centers on domestic consumption, but most of the turtles are exported for food to countries in East Asia, particularly China.
Sumatra, Indonesia boasts 13 species of native freshwater turtles and tortoises, many of which are exported in large quantities from a few locations in Sumatra. More than 25 tons of live turtles are exported each week to China, Hong Kong, and Singapore from two companies in the provinces of North Sumatra and Riau.3 There is no commercial breeding of turtles in Indonesia, so all trade turtles were either harvested from the wild in Indonesia or were imported into the country.
Conservation education about aquatic turtles is critical to support efforts to maintain an ecological balance of these animals in all countries, as well as to meet the nutritional needs of people around the world. While turtles have served as a food source for many years, taking too many turtles from the wild can have catastrophic results on the entire turtle population since wild aquatic turtle populations depend on long-lived adults to sustain their populations because they have delayed sexual maturity, low reproductive rates, high egg and juvenile mortality, and are vulnerable to trapping4.
Teaching about Turtles
The goals of teaching students about aquatic turtles include recognition of common turtles and turtle habitats both locally and globally, understanding of threats to turtle species locally and globally, and empowerment through understanding the actions that conservationists are taking to protect turtles around the world.
Fieldwork
We have worked with students of all ages in both natural habitats and classroom environments to investigate aquatic turtles. Aquatic turtle trapping is relatively easy and inexpensive and puts turtles in students’ hands, allowing data collection of morphometric measurements as well as weight and sex. Traps, which can be purchased at Memphis Net and Twine (www.memphisnet.net), allow teachers to work with students to design studies that explore food preferences, microhabitat preferences, activity time preferences, etc. so that students get experience with live animals, outdoor habitats, scientific equipment and procedures, and fieldwork, including data collection and reporting. All turtles captured in the wild are measured and marked (by filing a unique identification code on their marginal scutes while still in the field), photographed, and then released at the point of capture. Finally, we upload our data to a citizen science database like HerpMapper (www.herpmapper.org).
We engage students in inquiry investigations and conduct biological inventories of different aquatic habitats. We teach students how to safely catch and handle aquatic turtles, and how to set and use aquatic turtle traps and various measurement tools (calipers, digital scales, spring scales, etc.). While in the field, we look for threats to aquatic environments (lakes, streams, ephemeral pools, and other wetlands) and their semi-aquatic turtle inhabitants, and discuss potential pathways to avoid these threats. Students learn to identify and sex semi-aquatic turtles using various physical and behavioral characteristics.
If trapping is not feasible, you can study the turtles in the wild. Use binoculars to make observations without scaring the turtles away. Film turtles moving on land and in the water to analyze their movement patterns. Try to determine how long turtles stay submerged before surfacing to breathe. Some turtles, like snapping turtles, leave interesting footprints that can be followed.
Classroom Lessons
In addition to fieldwork, we teach lessons on aquatic turtles in the classroom. We typically start our studies by providing a variety of live local turtles for students to identify using either a field guide or a dichotomous key we created containing only turtles that students are likely to see/catch locally.If observing live turtles isn’t feasible, use field guide photos, internet photos, commercially available plastic turtle models, Plaster of Paris models that have been hand-painted, or turtle shells that have been preserved.
We often do handling, measuring, weighing, and data recording activities in the classroom (where it is cooler and turtles are slower moving). Practice in the classroom leads to better results in the field. After fieldwork, we discuss our activities in the field and then inform students about environmental pressures on local and global turtle populations.
We offer a variety of arts and crafts projects in the classroom. You can make and use costumes in the classroom as well as at public events. Have small student groups write plays and present the plays to the entire class. Write scripts like the one below so that students can learn more about the turtles while sharing that information with the public:
Hi, I’m Pam/Paul, a Painted Turtle. I am North Carolina’s most beautiful semi-aquatic turtle. (Semi-aquatic means I spend most of my time in the water, but I actually lay my eggs on land — but then again, I am a reptile.) I eat aquatic plants, aquatic animals, and dead things in the water. Young painted turtles can actually freeze and survive. So, I’m very adaptable. I love to bask, so look for me on a log on nice, warm, sunny days.
We have made and purchased puppets and used these in the classroom. We have asked students to write and share puppet plays (See The HERP Project puppet play scripts at theherpproject.uncg.edu/puppet-stories/.).
We make Plaster of Paris casts of aquatic turtles and provide field guides so that students can paint their turtles to resemble a real turtle. We have also created a variety of informational cards to share with the public, especially teachers and K-12 students.
In the U.S., instruction on turtles has focused on informal science education, such as programs in the summers and on weekends for students, teachers, and the general public. Indonesian endeavors have focused on formal education. Teachers have been trained in teacher workshops about the issues of turtle conservation and as a part of the workshops, have developed teaching and learning modules that have been formally evaluated at different grade levels. Ideally, teaching about turtles would occur both in informal and formal science education.
Teaching about turtles is timely and important. The Turtle Survival Alliance (http://www.turtlesurvival.org/) provides excellent resources, and they maintain a breeding facility for threatened turtles all over the world. Some people warn that we now have the greatest reptile crisis since the demise of the dinosaurs. No one wants to be responsible for the disappearance of turtles that have roamed our lands and swam in our rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds for 220 million years. Like all plants and animals, turtles serve unique roles, but as Aldo Leopold, the famous environmentalist remarked, only ignorant people would ask of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” We rarely see turtles any more in school classrooms, but maybe we should.
Notes
Williams, T. (1999). The Terrible Turtle Trade. Audubon 44, 101.
German CITES Scientific Authority (Federal Agency for Nature Conservation), Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Prepared by TRAFFIC Southeast Asia. (2001). An Overview of the Trade in live South-east Asian Freshwater Turtles. An Information Paper for the 17th Meeting of the CITES Animals Committee, Hanoi, Viet Nam, 30 July to 3 August 2001.
Shepherd, C. (2000). Export of Live Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises from North Sumatra and Riau, Indonesia: A Case Study. Chelonian Research Monographs, p. 112-119.
Cross, S. (2004). Personal Communication. North Carolina Wildlife Resources.
Acknowledgements:
The authors thank all faculty, staff, natural resource professionals, and students who have been affiliated with The HERP Project (and its precursor, Slip Slidin’ Away) and “UNIB Campus: A Safe Home for Turtles” over the past decade. We are especially indebted to Dr. Terry Tomasek, Elon University, who started, nurtured, and refined The Aquatic Turtles Project. We also gratefully acknowledge Jeff Hall, Ann Somers, John Groves, Deni Parlindungan, Douglas Lawton, and Ermawati P. Ningsih for their support, suggestions, and participation in Sumatran turtle conservation efforts in Bengkulu.
Catherine E. Matthews (cematthe@uncg.edu) is a Professor Emerita in Science/Environmental Education at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She was the Principal Investigator on The HERP Project (Herpetology Education in Rural Places and Spaces), a National Science Foundation-funded informal science education program. Aceng Ruyani (ruyani@unib.ac.id) is the Associate Professor in Developmental Biology and Conservation Education at the Graduate School of Science Education, Bengkulu University, Indonesia. Matthews and Ruyani have worked together on herpetology education projects since 2012. They received funding to support the research project which supports the spirit of the “UNIB Campus: A Safe Home for Turtles” program, which is a novelty for Indonesia. For more details, visit: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/PEER/PEERscience/PGA_168049