The Global Turtle Crisis—A Wildlife Trafficking Challenge Like No Other

Last summer I attended the 22^nd Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles (Tuscson, Arizona USA). This was only the 4^th of these annual symposia that I have been to, but as with the others I came away with a huge amount of information along with new friends and colleagues. In fact, it was only 2 years earlier during my attendance of the 20^th Annual Symposium that the idea for this Wildlife Trafficking Special Issue came into focus during a meeting of the Chelonian Conservation and Biology editorial team. With so many of threats facing turtles, none is more devastating than the trafficking of turtles for the pet trade and other markets around the world. Often referred to as the Asian Turtle Crisis, this trafficking is driven by global supply chains that dodge enforcement to pull 10s of thousands of turtles if not more from the wild only to die in transport or end up as ill cared for pets or food. However, no longer can we blame only a single geographic region. This is a Global Turtle Crisis, and these conservation challenges exist almost everywhere turtles and tortoises occur. It is an existential threat to their existence like none other. Even in our own borders, numerous species—box turtles, spotted turtles, mud turtles, and many more—are being plundered from their native habitats for sale to outside markets.

A horrible example of this turtle trafficking epidemic occurred in 2018 when 10,186 radiated tortoises (Astrochelys radiata) were confiscated in Madagascar before they could enter the illegal turtle trafficking network (see cover photo). Sadly, more than 1000 perished before they could be rescued and rehabilitated; had the confiscation not occurred the death rate would have been much higher. A silver lining to this catastrophe was the fact that so many organizations and volunteers helped with the initial care of these tortoises, as well as with transitioning turtles to long-term care, and for some, eventual reintroduction.

With this global turtle crisis at the forefront of turtle and tortoise conservation, we bring you a collection of 8 papers in this Special Issue to provide a greater understanding of the magnitude of the turtle trafficking crisis as well as some of the solutions. I’d like to give a huge thanks to Dr. Chris Shepherd of Monitor Conservation Research Society, who helped develop this collection and someone who himself has spent decades in Southeast Asia combating illegal wildlife trade of many taxa and especially turtles. This issue would not have been possible without Chris’ leadership and savvy instinct of what to include.

The papers in this collection cover the gamut of the illegal turtle trade challenge. The first several papers recap the global and regional trade numbers for several species in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America (Boratto and Griffis 2024; Roopa 2024; Shearer & Türkozan 2024; Wakao 2024). These are followed by a collection of papers that detail how this issue of trade, both legal and illegal, is being addressed, with papers on the application of socio-ecological approaches (Christman et al. 2024), on the anatomy of what a turtle confiscation looks like—in this case box turtles in the United States (Tubberville et al. 2024), and on how our U.S. Endangered Species Act can be leveraged to slow the trade of our precious shelled creatures (DuBois and Uhlemanna 2024). Together, these papers represent a cross-section of the problems and solutions for the turtle trafficking crisis, and hopefully then can raise awareness and give a better sense of a roadmap of how to address the issue for our readers. I hope you enjoy them.

To bid adieu, I’d like to acknowledge our entire editorial team—especially Peter Lindeman, Jeff Lovich, and Vivian Páez—for all their efforts, and give special thanks to our Founding Editor Anders Rhodin for always inspiring us to make CCB the best it can be. I’d also like to thank all the referees that continue to ensure that the papers we publish are of the best possible caliber. Finally, I want to give a shout out to our publishers at Knowledge Works Global LTD, especially Maria Preston-Cargill, Allyson King, and Samantha Weinkauf. Like so many things, it takes a great team to make this journal happen.