Turtles reaped, sold as delicacy

By CHRIS VAUGHN

STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Turtles sit in shallow water in a creek on the campus of the University of Texas at Arlington.

Tens of thousands of Texas turtles are being hauled out of lakes, streams and stock ponds every year, virtually all of them bound for dinner tables in China or Asian food markets in big U.S. cities.

The take is so significant and so unregulated that biologists, conservationists and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department agree that the state must step in soon with tougher regulations, or the turtle population may never recover.

"This is no different than the buffalo slaughters of the 1800s," said Christopher Jones, an environmental lawyer for the Texas Committee on Natural Resources. "If we don't do something, a few people have the capacity to legally harvest every turtle in Texas on the nongame list. Every single one."

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, which has oversight of all wildlife, is scheduled to take up the issue of turtles at its monthly meeting in Austin on Wednesday and Thursday.

The commissioners have a choice: side with the Texas Committee on Natural Resources and declare an emergency prohibition on the collection of all turtles, or back its staff-driven proposal to safeguard all but one species on a slightly slower timetable.

"I think it's important to know that we are moving in the same direction, but we're not sure there is an emergency," said Matt Wagner, wildlife diversity program director for Parks & Wildlife.

"We can agree that unlimited turtle harvesting cannot go on."

Much of the concern is due to one man -- Bob Popplewell, a Palo Pinto County businessman who has 400-plus people who collect turtles and sell to him for shipment.

Popplewell, who owns the Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Santo, contends he is not only ridding ranchers and farmers of unwanted "vermin," he is also engaging in rural economic development and helping reduce the trade imbalance with China.

"This is a vast renewable resource," Popplewell said of turtles. "If you line up 1,000 farm boys, 999 will tell you they have shot turtles, and the other one is probably lying. That's what you do in Texas. You shoot turtles.

"But if there's a place on the globe that will use these turtles, why shouldn't we turn that vast renewable resource into a valuable resource instead of wasting it?"

Of equal and immediate concern to biologists and environmental groups is the suspicion that the turtles may be harmful to people. Some of the turtles are being collected in rivers and lakes in which there is a ban on fish consumption because of high levels of PCBs and pesticides, Jones said.

John D. Parker, a Parks & Wildlife commissioner from Lufkin, said he is "critically concerned" that people in Texas are buying potentially contaminated turtle meat. He said he wants Parks & Wildlife and the Department of State Health Services to look into the matter immediately.

"We have an obligation to the people of Texas who shop in these markets to be absolutely certain that the food they are buying is clean of all chemicals and residues that would harm them," Parker said. "If this means we shut down all trafficking of commercial turtle meat, so be it."

Although the Texas Department of State Health Services tests fish for contamination, it has never done so on turtles, according to spokesman Doug McBride.

Open season

The commercial harvesting of turtles has been going on in Texas for years.

Nine species of turtle in Texas, including five sea species, are protected and off-limits for collection.

But for the rest of the turtles, no law governed collecting them until 1999 when Parks & Wildlife became concerned with the growing business.

Since then, as long as a person buys a $25 permit for collecting and a $50 permit for buying and selling, harvesting is legal.

But the number of turtles collected in recent years continues to climb, reaching levels that finally drew the attention of environmentalists, conservationists and scientists from the public, private and academic worlds.

Here's one eye-popping number -- 256,638 wild-caught adult turtles were flown out of Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to Asia between 2002 and 2005, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that was obtained by the Fort Worth Zoo.

Adding to the concern is evidence that the information being reported by commercial businessmen is less than accurate, state officials say.

"It's safe to say that when you have a system of self-reporting and self-regulation, there tends to be underreporting," Wagner said, citing huge discrepancies between the numbers of soft-shell turtles reported as "wild-caught" versus the number purchased for export.

The turtle situation in Texas is another example of globalization.

China's literal appetite for turtle meat, a delicacy, has decimated the wild populations in China, and also in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations.

Many of Asia's species are on the brink of extinction, their losses fueled in the last 15 years by an exploding number of rich Chinese who will pay top dollar for turtles.

As Asia's wild populations have dwindled, turtle farms have sprung up, but they cannot keep up with demand, experts said.

North America was the natural choice to make up the difference, according to Rick Hudson, a conservation biologist at the Fort Worth Zoo and the co-chairman of the Turtle Survival Alliance.

"We knew it was a matter of time before the tentacles of this would reach North America," Hudson said. "Once they're done here, they'll go to Africa and South America. There is the potential for a devastating drain on turtles worldwide. This is commercial market hunting in its purest form."

Looking at options

Popplewell runs what is essentially a co-op with collectors around the state who pay $249 to join and then sell their take to him for shipment. Reportedly, he pays the collector anywhere from 10 cents a pound for a red-eared slider to $1 a pound for a snapping turtle.

He declined to say how much he gets for the turtles.

He has been on a recruiting push statewide, just last week at an appearance in Corsicana, because he needs more turtles to meet his contracts in Asia.

He said he tries to steer the collectors only to privately held stock tanks and ponds and does not encourage people to take them from public lakes and rivers. He said turtles can overtake stock ponds or lakes and rid the water of fish.

"They are damaging to small bodies of water," he said. "They're at the top of the food chain in a closed environment. I had a woman sign up last night because all she wants to do is get the turtles back under control in her lake. If you're going to get rid of the turtles, why don't you get the cash? It's just like selling the pecans on your land or selling a deer lease."

The problem, biologists say, is that turtles are not exactly rabbits.

Very few of the young survive to adulthood, and those that do are late to mature sexually. But turtles make up for their high losses of young by living a long time, up to 50 to 70 years in many common species.

Taking the older, mature females out of their environment rids the population of their opportunity to rebound, biologists say.

A number of states, including Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina and Alabama, have prohibited all commercial collecting of turtles in recent years, which is putting more pressure on Texas' animals, Jones said.

Texas Parks & Wildlife staff have proposed a ban on any commercial collecting except of the red-eared slider, the most abundant turtle in the state.

Because the state is required to publish the change in regulations and accept public comment, it would probably be summer before the regulation takes effect, Wagner said.

"We have to be able to train our game wardens in identifying turtles, and we are taking steps to do that," Wagner said.

Popplewell said he hopes Parks & Wildlife will "be rational" about their decision and not impinge on private property rights of landowners.

"Everybody needs to calm down," he said. "It's one thing to curb something. It's quite another to shut it down."

IN THE KNOW

PROTECTED TEXAS TURTLES

Alligator snapping turtle

Atlantic hawksbill sea turtle (endangered)

Cagle's map turtle

Chihuahuan mud turtle

Green sea turtle

Kemp's ridley sea turtle (endangered)

Leatherback sea turtle (endangered)

Loggerhead sea turtle

Texas tortoise

COMMON TEXAS TURTLES

Common snapping turtle

Desert box turtle

Mississippi map turtle

Missouri river cooter

Red-eared slider

Texas diamondback terrapin

Texas map turtle

Texas spiny softshell

SOURCE: Texas Parks & Wildlife Department

IF YOU GO

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the Commission Hearing Room, 4200 Smith School Road, Austin.