This report is the third to chronicle the daily activities of a TSA team’s visit to four countries in Asia – Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines - to design turtle facilities, develop conservation programs, and consult on turtle husbandry issues. The team is led by Rick Hudson and includes Bill Zeigler, Lonnie McCaskill and Dave Manser. The team was met in Myanmar by Kalyar Platt and her father Nyunt Thein (a local retired civil engineer).

This report is the second to chronicle the daily activities of a TSA team’s visit to four countries in Asia – Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines - to design turtle facilities, develop conservation programs, and consult on turtle husbandry issues. The team is led by Rick Hudson and includes Bill Zeigler, Lonnie McCaskill and Dave Manser. The team was met in Myanmar by Kalyar Platt and her father Nyunt Thein (a local retired civil engineer).

This report is the first to chronicle the daily activities of a TSA team’s visit to four countries in Asia – Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines - to design turtle facilities, develop conservation programs, and consult on turtle husbandry issues. The team is led by Rick Hudson and includes Lonnie McCaskill and Dave Manser. The team was met in Myanmar by Kalyar Platt and her father Nyunt Thein (a local retired civil engineer) in Yangon, Myanmar.  The mission in Myanmar is to begin designing and “costing out” turtle and tortoise facilities that were recommended at the January 2009 workshop. 

The Asian turtle crisis, driven largely by market demand from China, has decimated tortoise and freshwater turtle populations throughout Asia in recent decades. When wild populations were effectively exhausted locally, the trade expanded globally and began to put pressure on wild populations in the United States.

The Asian Turtle Program (ATP) of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo (CMZ) has worked since 1998 to promote tortoise and freshwater turtle (TFT) conservation through awareness, training and research activities.  The Mauremys annamensis Project (MAP) has focused on this critically endangered and endemic species in central Vietnam with a permanent field presence since 2007.  MAP activities have included surveys, community meetings and wildlife protection department training in key areas.  With the threats to this species now fully realised, it received full protection in 2006 under Vietnam’s principal wildlife protection law, Decree 32.

A high point of the January 2009 workshop was the announcement that a juvenile Batagur trivitatta had been pulled from the adult breeding pond at the Yadanabon Zoo just one week earlier. Apparently hatched in 2008 from an undetected nest, the specimen is in the same size class as a cohort of 2008 wild-hatched juveniles from the Upper Chindwin River. Robust and healthy, the hatchling had obviously fared well in the semi-natural adult breeding pond. The keeper reports that several others have been seen up basking in the adult pond, and a full inspection of the sand nest bank revealed a number of old nests with hatched egg shells. This is remarkable news and helps settle our concerns that something was missing in their captive diet or environment.   At the time of this writing 17 new hatchlings from 2009 have recently been recovered.  B. trivittata is one of the most threatened species of turtles on earth and was considered close to extinction when it was “rediscovered” in a temple pond in Mandalay in 2002.  A dedicated captive breeding and management facility was opened in December 2006 which is already at maximum capacity with 163 young trivittata collected on the Chindwin from 2006 – 2008.  The B. trivittata Species Recovery Plan workshop in January 2009 recommended that two new facilities be built to allow captive population growth while suitable release sites are found.

In recent years, the interest among European zoos and privates regarding breeding Asian turtles, with an emphasis on species of the genus Cuora, has been increasing (see also the TSA Newsletter 2008). This is due to the conservation status of a number of species (classified into the highest IUCN threat categories) and thus also the difficulty or impossibility of obtaining specimens.

The goal of Project EHAP is to conduct research on optimal breeding and husbandry conditions as a contribution to the conservation of the critically endangered Madagascar flat-tailed tortoise (Pyxis planicauda). Husbandry of this species is not well documented or understood, as until recently, this species has rarely been kept outside of Madagascar. This project seeks to develop and document techniques which can be used to successfully keep and breed this species.

Katala Foundation Incorporated (KFI) is a Palawan-based NGO working on the conservation of threatened native species. The Katala Institute for Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation (KIEBC), one of several centers / projects managed by KFI, is located in Antipuluan, Narra, Palawan. It is here that the only range country assurance colony of the Palawan endemic and critically endangered Philippine Forest Turtle (Siebenrockiella leytensis) is held.

The epic move of the last Chinese female Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) from Changsha Zoo to the last Chinese male at the Suzhou Zoo in 2008 resulted in successful mating, producing two clutches totalling over one hundred eggs. Despite this success, unfortunately none of the eggs hatched. About half the eggs of the second clutch were not properly shelled and many cracked during laying. Nutritional deficencies of the long-term captive female – over 70 years in captivity - were most likely to blame for this setback, and apparently caused any fertilized eggs to die early during development.   Despite this disappointment, this event captured the attention of the global conservation community, and the remarkable story was featured in a PBS/Nature special called The Loneliest Animals that aired on April 19, 2009. Click here to view.