SELVA International :: Amazon River Turtle

SELVA :: PROJECTS :: Amazon River Turtle

Conserving Endangered Giant Amazon Turtles

Why care about turtles?

Turtles are unique ancient animals that have been on earth for over 250 million years. Despite this long history, human exploitation of turtles (for food and oil) over the last few hundred years has caused their populations to decline precipitously worldwide. Scientists believe that without strong conservation action many of the world's turtles will become extinct in the next decades.

While efforts to save sea turtles have become widely supported, the plight of freshwater turtles goes largely unnoticed by the general public. This is especially concerning because freshwater turtles are important biodiversity components of ecosystems, which means their extinction could cause the environment to degrade in ways still incompletely understood. Turtles play important roles in nutrient cycling, decomposition, and energy flow in lakes and rivers. They are important dispersers of seeds in riverine forests and important sources of food for other animals.

Human use of turtles is especially problematic, because hunters target breeding females and their eggs, which leaves turtles little chance to reproduce. Female turtles are easily collected live in large numbers while they are nesting (visible and immobile) on sandy beaches. They are simply flipped on to their backs and collected at leisure, and their eggs are easily sighted and collected. In the Amazon, where giant river turtles (up to a meter in length) were historically observed migrating in the hundreds of thousands, endangered turtles are now rarely spotted. And people continue to hunt them.

Finally, like polar bears, river turtles are susceptible to climate change. Climate change can affect river levels, which in turn affects turtles. River turtles depend on seasonal fluctuations of rivers to expose their nesting beaches in the dry season. If rivers fail to lower or flood too soon, turtles have nowhere to lay their eggs, and nests are flooded before they can hatch. In the Amazon we have observed large numbers of turtle nests (up to 100% on many beaches) flooded before eggs could hatch. More research is needed to monitor the effects of climate change on these endangered animals.

How is SELVA helping turtles?

SELVA is helping indigenous communities in Bolivia implement a community-based turtle research and conservation project in Noel Kempff Mercado National Park (PNNKM), a UNESCO World Heritage site in a subsistence-based region of the Amazon. The project's goal is to conserve viable populations of rapidly declining giant Amazon river turtles and to research the threats they face in the environment (e.g., human use, climate change). The species of focus are the Giant South American River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa) and the Yellow Spotted Amazon River Turtle (P. unifilis). Both these species were once abundant throughout the Amazon and Orinoco Basins but are now listed on the IUCN Red List and as Endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

This project is unique in that it was initiated through a collaboration of local communities and the national park, as a response to the concerns (that turtles are disappearing) of local people who use turtles as subsistence protein sources. In 2003, SELVA scientists were invited to participate as scientific advisors to the project. In 2005-2006, SELVA scientists helped local resource managers implement ecological research, which documented serious decline in local turtle populations and negative effects related to human exploitaiton and early flooding of turtle nests.

SELVA is now helping local managers design and implement a science-based, community-managed turtle conservation plan. The plan will include limits placed on turtle hunting, so that only indigenous people can exploit turtles for subsistence use, in a regulated manner that allows for turtle recovery. The plan will include scientific monitoring of turtle populations and exploration of local alternatives to turtle meat. Due to the project's current success, it has interested managers from other national parks and state governments in Bolivia, as well as in Brazil. Our goal is to continue collaboration on this project in PNNKM and then to help expand its reach to other areas of South America.

How can you help save turtles?

By donating money to SELVA you can help sustain our efforts to conserve these rare and amazing creatures. Additionally, if you love adventure- a more exciting way to help these turtles is to TRAVEL TO THE AMAZON, where you can see these endangered animals and meet the people who are working so hard to save them! Learn about this exciting new opportunity- a collaboration between SELVA, the Bolivia National Park System, and indigenous communities- to combine travel with donation to directly support this conservation project in South America!

Project collaborators:
• Noel Kempff Mercado National Park (Bolivia)
• Indigenous communities of the Bajo Paraguá (Bolivia)
• Turtle Conservation Fund (IUCN)
• Servicio Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (SERNAP) (Bolivian National Park Service)
• Fulbright (USA)
• The Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation (USA)
• Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia (USA)
• Fundación Noel Kempff Mercado (Bolivian NGO)

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