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FRIENDLY discussion on taking turtles from the wild
- Thread starter Rob1985
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If you consider the true cost of taking a turtle from the wild then $100 for a CB seems a very reasonable price to pay.
Here is a posting I found on Youtube.
Great Big Story
Published on Jun 4, 2018
Endemic to the dry southern forests of Madagascar, the radiated tortoise has an incredibly long lifespan—the oldest tortoise on record reached an estimated 188 years of age. They boast highly intricate, dome-shaped shells lined with blood vessels, making them sensitive to the touch. Due to hunting and the illegal pet trade, the species has seen a 50 percent decrease in their population over the past decade. It is estimated that a staggering quarter of a million radiated tortoises are harvested each year. Because of these constant threats, conservationists have estimated that these tortoises could go extinct in less than 20 years.
BloodbucketXXL
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I don't disagree with the idea that taking turtles (or any animal) from the wild should be discouraged, but I sort of have to play devil's advocate here.
1) Someone mentioned above that it's NOT just a case of one person taking one or turtles, but that it's hundreds of thousands of people each taking one or two turtles. And that adds up to A LOT of turtles. While I don't disagree with that, I have to point out that those are isolated incidents that don't have anything to do with each other. If 5,000 people each go out and take two turtles, that's 10,000 turtles gone. Which is a big deal. But if Jack goes out and captures two turtles, that's only 2 out of 10,000. The other 9,998 turtles still would have been gone regardless of what Jack does. Jack's contribution to the turtle crisis is still only 2. Sort of like you can't blame me for the outcome of a presidential election just because I didn't go out and vote. The net effect from all non-voters is huge, but everyone else is going to vote (or not vote) the same way they did regardless of what I do. My contribution is minimal.
2) Someone also posted about turtle's high mortality rates and long lives, which is why taking one turtle isn't really removing one turtle but more like removing hundreds or thousands of turtles. The thing is, if Jack goes out and captures one baby just-recently-hatched turtle, that turtle's chances of survival in the wild are very slim. Isn't it likely that that turtle would have probably ended up being one of the many turtles that die before ever reproducing anyway? And yes, I obviously realize that there's no way to tell which turtles would have survived and which would have died. But just going off of their low survival rates, any individual (hatchling) turtle is obviously quite unlikely to contribute to the gene pool regardless of if it is captured or left alone. It probably would have died anyway. And yes, I realize that this obviously only applies to the babies.
1) Someone mentioned above that it's NOT just a case of one person taking one or turtles, but that it's hundreds of thousands of people each taking one or two turtles. And that adds up to A LOT of turtles. While I don't disagree with that, I have to point out that those are isolated incidents that don't have anything to do with each other. If 5,000 people each go out and take two turtles, that's 10,000 turtles gone. Which is a big deal. But if Jack goes out and captures two turtles, that's only 2 out of 10,000. The other 9,998 turtles still would have been gone regardless of what Jack does. Jack's contribution to the turtle crisis is still only 2. Sort of like you can't blame me for the outcome of a presidential election just because I didn't go out and vote. The net effect from all non-voters is huge, but everyone else is going to vote (or not vote) the same way they did regardless of what I do. My contribution is minimal.
2) Someone also posted about turtle's high mortality rates and long lives, which is why taking one turtle isn't really removing one turtle but more like removing hundreds or thousands of turtles. The thing is, if Jack goes out and captures one baby just-recently-hatched turtle, that turtle's chances of survival in the wild are very slim. Isn't it likely that that turtle would have probably ended up being one of the many turtles that die before ever reproducing anyway? And yes, I obviously realize that there's no way to tell which turtles would have survived and which would have died. But just going off of their low survival rates, any individual (hatchling) turtle is obviously quite unlikely to contribute to the gene pool regardless of if it is captured or left alone. It probably would have died anyway. And yes, I realize that this obviously only applies to the babies.
I’m in Missouri and when I was a kid (5 years old to about 14) my grandparents would do yard work every day in the summer/spring and would find me box turtles- probably like a dozen. I wouldn’t keep them, but I would play with them, sometimes paint their shells (which I know now was harmful
) and then let them go back where we found them. Now I’m twenty, nearly twenty-one, and we never see box turtles anymore, my grandparents didn’t move or anything, everything is the same but the turtles are gone. I don’t know if people keeping them is the problem, or if they got hit by cars, or just moved out. I miss seeing them though.
Every year in my small town in Arkansas, they have a Turtle Race. I have never attended as for one thing it's always on Saturdays when i work. But a friend told me that people come in with boxies they have scrounged up for the event. (How well cared for, fed, watered etc? I bet they just keep them jammed together in a box for a few weeks.)
They often paint numbers etc on them. One turtle i helped across the rd last year had purple paint on him.
At the end of the event, they just set them loose there or nearby IF THAT. He said he has seen people just walk away leaving the box with turtles sitting there.
He lives in town and has seen turtles walk by his house with paint on them.
How much stress and disruption for a brief silly entertainment...
I confess i have taken 2 turtles from the wild, which i won't do no more, but at least i love them to death and don't prod them to sprint faster.
They often paint numbers etc on them. One turtle i helped across the rd last year had purple paint on him.
At the end of the event, they just set them loose there or nearby IF THAT. He said he has seen people just walk away leaving the box with turtles sitting there.
He lives in town and has seen turtles walk by his house with paint on them.
How much stress and disruption for a brief silly entertainment...
I confess i have taken 2 turtles from the wild, which i won't do no more, but at least i love them to death and don't prod them to sprint faster.
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Haven't posted in a while but just happened across this thread. When I was a kid, I used to see box turtles all the time and I agree they're certainly less common now. I do not really mind occasional non-commercial collection, and can't help but feel some of the negative attitude is misdirected here. I suspect that many turtle enthusiasts grew up keeping a wild turtle or two and we should be so lucky in future generations - how many kids today could be bothered to put their phones down long enough?
Certainly we all agree that habitat loss, road kills, and (possibly) commercial collection are orders of magnitude more damaging to box turtles. Giving attention to such a minor issue strikes me as a political solution - it gives people (states, regulatory agencies) the outward appearance of taking action, without any effort required or results delivered. I don't intend to argue, but I would hate to see someone get scared off because of such strong opinions being thrown around.
Steve
Certainly we all agree that habitat loss, road kills, and (possibly) commercial collection are orders of magnitude more damaging to box turtles. Giving attention to such a minor issue strikes me as a political solution - it gives people (states, regulatory agencies) the outward appearance of taking action, without any effort required or results delivered. I don't intend to argue, but I would hate to see someone get scared off because of such strong opinions being thrown around.
Steve
BloodbucketXXL
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I'd also like to add that there's a very good chance that seeing wild turtles at all is an indication of a problem. Take where I live and work, for example. The general area where I live has a good amount of forest and wetland areas, but in the last decade it has become increasingly fragmented as a result of development. There are still lots of wild areas around, but a housing development goes up here. A road gets put down there. Sewage lines get added somewhere, etc. All of which results in a big wilderness area turning into lots of small little lots of wilderness that are intercut with roads and parking lots. Possibly as a result of this, I saw LOTS of turtles last year (very few this year, though). About 2 thirds of those turtles were smeared across the road.
Keep in mind that I'm not going out looking for turtles. This is just me walking/driving down neighborhood streets.
Point being, we can blame people keeping one or two turtles for the decline of turtle populations, but I suspect that in many cases, a lot of those turtles wouldn't be getting seen at all if there wasn't a bigger problem at hand. Last year I was walking along the edge of some woods and saw a large box turtle walking along the edge of the woods. I left it there, but I suspect that turtle is going to have some problems in the future. Because those "woods" that I found the turtle in are really just about a 1 acre lot of undeveloped land located right in the middle of a housing development. With a busy 4 lane highway located about 100 feet from one side of the lot. There's a very good chance that that turtle is either going to end up smeared on the road, or just show up in somebody's yard.
Which brings me to my next point. Even if most people aren't going around looking for turtles to keep, increased development increasing the likelihood that SOMEONE is eventually going to run into that turtle. And then there's the question of what to do with it. Take for example where I work. The place where I work is in the busy downtown district. It's bordered on one side by seawater, bordered on one side by a city port that is inaccessible, and bordered on the other two sides by nothing but developed land. In the past 4 years, I've found 8 turtles show up where I work. Half of them were smeared across the road. Of the other 4, I kept 2 (two baby snapping turtles). And two I relocated to other areas (a large adult yellow bellied slider, and a juvenile box turtle). Here's the thing though...I shouldn't have been seeing those turtles at all, and there are absolutely no good options for what I should do with them once I found them. You're not supposed to keep wild turtles. You're also not supposed to take wild turtles and then relocate them. So if you see a turtle and can't find out where it came from, and if leaving it where it where you found it is essentially a death sentence anyway, then what are the good options here?
I'm not saying that that's always the situation when it comes to people finding wild turtles, but I expect this situation to become a lot more common as their habitats get a lot more fragmented and isolated. I suspect that a decent number of wild turtles that were put in captivity were probably found in places where they shouldn't have been anyway. And that the people who found those turtles had no idea where they came from, and didn't just want to leave them to die. Sure, one can argue that it's best to just leave the turtle there and let it take its chances, even if it's almost certain to get smeared across the road. But in a case like that, I think the biggest issue isn't the person deciding to keep the turtle. I think the bigger issue is the turtle being in a position to get found like that in the first place.
Keep in mind that I'm not going out looking for turtles. This is just me walking/driving down neighborhood streets.
Point being, we can blame people keeping one or two turtles for the decline of turtle populations, but I suspect that in many cases, a lot of those turtles wouldn't be getting seen at all if there wasn't a bigger problem at hand. Last year I was walking along the edge of some woods and saw a large box turtle walking along the edge of the woods. I left it there, but I suspect that turtle is going to have some problems in the future. Because those "woods" that I found the turtle in are really just about a 1 acre lot of undeveloped land located right in the middle of a housing development. With a busy 4 lane highway located about 100 feet from one side of the lot. There's a very good chance that that turtle is either going to end up smeared on the road, or just show up in somebody's yard.
Which brings me to my next point. Even if most people aren't going around looking for turtles to keep, increased development increasing the likelihood that SOMEONE is eventually going to run into that turtle. And then there's the question of what to do with it. Take for example where I work. The place where I work is in the busy downtown district. It's bordered on one side by seawater, bordered on one side by a city port that is inaccessible, and bordered on the other two sides by nothing but developed land. In the past 4 years, I've found 8 turtles show up where I work. Half of them were smeared across the road. Of the other 4, I kept 2 (two baby snapping turtles). And two I relocated to other areas (a large adult yellow bellied slider, and a juvenile box turtle). Here's the thing though...I shouldn't have been seeing those turtles at all, and there are absolutely no good options for what I should do with them once I found them. You're not supposed to keep wild turtles. You're also not supposed to take wild turtles and then relocate them. So if you see a turtle and can't find out where it came from, and if leaving it where it where you found it is essentially a death sentence anyway, then what are the good options here?
I'm not saying that that's always the situation when it comes to people finding wild turtles, but I expect this situation to become a lot more common as their habitats get a lot more fragmented and isolated. I suspect that a decent number of wild turtles that were put in captivity were probably found in places where they shouldn't have been anyway. And that the people who found those turtles had no idea where they came from, and didn't just want to leave them to die. Sure, one can argue that it's best to just leave the turtle there and let it take its chances, even if it's almost certain to get smeared across the road. But in a case like that, I think the biggest issue isn't the person deciding to keep the turtle. I think the bigger issue is the turtle being in a position to get found like that in the first place.
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