Today we don't talk about birds, we don't talk about animals, we want to talk about wild native turtles that have been outside the public eye for many years.
Wild tortoises are also one of the prey of big cats. The copyright and source of the image are shown in the picture.
The cat alliance has traveled to many places in the wild, never met wild turtles, but has seen many hard-working mountain people. During the day, they would pass by a stream and find a stick to poke under the big stone to see if there were any flat-breasted turtles, because one could change for hundreds of pieces; at night, they would play a flashlight and follow the stream to find the spiny-breasted frog they called the stone chicken, and when the conditions were good, they could harvest a few pounds a night.
Even for the taxi, the driver would tell me about his buying flat-breasted turtle stew soup to cure hemorrhoids, which was the farthest distance in the world, and I was deeply skeptical of the efficacy. Later, the driver told me that because the price increase can sell money, it will not kill and raise, the purpose is not self-evident, and it is more important to sell at a price than to "cure the disease".
Sell or eat, and our native wild turtle population is dying out. But unlike the bleakness of the wild, the clamor of the artificial market has continued unabated. As soon as we step into the aquarium market, we can see a wide range of pet turtles for sale, the most of which should be brazilian turtles, and native turtles such as yellow-edged closed-shell turtles are also among them. These artificially bred tortoises obscure the fact that they are already very rare in the wild.
In response to this blind spot, we invited professionals to write articles to clear the fog, many of which you may have never heard before.
Such a beautiful stream belongs to flat-breasted turtles, to spiny-breasted frogs, not to poachers. Chen Lao wet photo
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Twenty years ago, at the entrance of the aquarium market, various native wild turtles were put in pots to be peddled, and now this scene has long been lost, because many species of wild turtles have been almost caught. They are disappearing at a speed that is visible to our naked eyes.
When turtle and turtle farms hear that there are still wild turtles in the mountains, they will not hesitate to carpet search the mountains to find fresh and strong wild genes in order to breed better offspring to sell for money. What we should be more concerned about is that in this way, whether it is green water and green mountains or golden mountains and silver mountains, it will eventually become an empty mountain, driven by this market, what is the current situation of our native wild turtles? Can captive-bred turtles eventually feed back their wild populations?
The sight of artificially bred yellow-rimmed closed-shell turtle seedlings may make you think that there are many of these turtles, but the truth is that they are critically endangered in the wild. Image from the web
Wild turtles native to China at risk
The current situation of China's native wild turtle is not optimistic, from the iUCN Red List of endangered species on China's current 33 species of turtle threatened level assessment can be seen, in addition to the 3 species of the genus Of Chinese turtle has not yet been assessed, spotted turtle (why has the spotted turtle become so rare, look here, in the past fifty years, yunnan green peacock, Asian elephants how? ) and several species of the genus Closed-shelled turtle were assessed as critically endangered (vu), all species of the Turtle Family (except some Closed-shelled Turtles), Flat-breasted Turtles and Burmese Tortoises were assessed as endangered, and all species of the Turtle Family, concave tortoises, four-clawed tortoises and Chinese turtles were assessed as vulnerable (vu). There are also native turtles in the wild, but the number of populations in the wild has been decreasing year by year.
There are only 3 known turtles in the world, two of which live in Suzhou Zoo but failed to breed, and the other lives in Vietnam (the story of the turtle can be poked: the animal is lonely). Image from the web
Take, for example, the turtles that are the most widely distributed and most successful in captivity. In the past, the northern limit of the distribution of turtles in China could reach the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and the southern limit was Guangxi, Yunnan and other places, and the distribution range covered almost the entire eastern region and Taiwan Island, and was also seen in Japan and North Korea. Today, wild turtles in North China are rarely found, mainly in the Yangtze River Delta region. Habitat loss and human capture are the main causes.
This is what we often call turtles, which were once widespread and are now extinct in North China. Image from the web
From the perspective of taxonomy, there are about 6 families, 18 genera and 33 species of turtles in China, which can be divided into sea turtles, tortoises, aquatic turtles and semi-aquatic turtles according to habitat types. Standing in the way of the crisis truth of their wild populations is the apparent prosperity of farmed turtles.
The native turtle taxa commonly found in large-scale culture includes a few species of closed-shell turtles (such as three-lined closed-shell turtles, gold-headed closed-shell turtles, and Baise closed-shell turtles), as well as the genus of quasi-aquatic turtles, especially the latter population base is large, easy to reproduce, and now has a relatively large artificial population.
However, other species of turtles and tortoises on the market are still mainly from wild capture, occasionally found in artificial breeding, far from large-scale breeding, especially the flat-breasted turtle genus (platysternon) species are the most obvious. Flat-breasted turtles are listed as a class of protected by the Cites Convention in international trade, with only sporadic artificial breeding records, and are only listed as "three haves" protected animals in China.
Almost all of the flat-breasted turtles seen on the market are caught in the wild. Image from the web
Behind the boom
What impact does farming have on the survival of wild turtles?
Theoretically, the use of artificially bred, commercialized individuals to supply the market to reduce the consumption of wild resources is an effective way to do so. However, the success of this approach must meet the following elements:
For the model of artificial farming to reduce the consumption of wild populations, the following points must be achieved if they are to be successful. Image from the web
►1. There is a bottom line for wild acquisition. Since the original seed sources are all from the wild, the acquisition of seed sources needs to be limited in number, so as not to affect the normal reproduction of the target species in the wild. This means that there is a need for adequate investigation and research on field resources, and reasonable collection quotas need to be formulated based on detailed resource data.
►2. Daily supervision of aquaculture enterprises. Eliminate the phenomenon of uncontrolled collection of wild seed sources and rapid profit through the whitewashing of wild fishing individuals.
►3. Distinction should be made between breeding for commercialized individuals and between breeding (retention) individuals. Because the commodified individual does not care about hybridization, close relatives and other individuals. Individuals who are retained for breeding should ensure that the ancestral origin is as detailed as possible and that the lineage is well managed for future examination.
And these three points have been absent for a long time in Chinese mainland.
The absence of factors 1 and 2 has led to wild populations being collected in large quantities in a short period of time and unable to reproduce normally, resulting in a huge number of captive breeding and a scene that cannot be seen in the wild. The absence of factor 3 eliminates the possibility of future restoration of wild populations that want to be released into captivity.
Take a chestnut:
The three-lined closed-shelled turtle is named after the three black lines on its dorsal carapace. Image from the web
Not long ago, the three-line closed-shell turtle (cuora trifasciata) only existed as an independent species, and farmers would only roughly divide it into different individuals such as "Hainan species", "Guangxi species", "Guangdong species" and "Vietnamese species" according to their origin and appearance; among them, the so-called "Vietnamese species" had the largest individual and the highest reproductive capacity; while the "Guangdong species" was considered to have good body color performance and high ornamentality. Therefore, in order to obtain a larger number of individuals with good appearance performance, farmers will use "Vietnamese species" and "Cantonese species" for breeding.
However, in recent years, taxonomists have found through molecular identification techniques that the three-line closed-shell turtles in Chinese mainland and Vietnam are basically two completely independent turtle species, each with several subspecies. This means that the descendants of the "xx species" and "Vietnamese species" bred under the farm are a large number of hybrid species outside the natural world, and after several generations of reproduction, the pedigree is even more mixed. This undoubtedly directly rejects the possibility of putting these artificially bred individuals into the original habitat for rehabilitation.
Raising turtles sown in the Rich Sutra and scientifically protecting Wild Turtles in China are two different things. Image from the web
In addition to the mixture of genes, re-breeding is not the same as simple release. We can find that the forestry department of Hainan Province has carried out several large-scale turtle release activities, but has never seen follow-up reports and studies on the release effect, combined with the current situation of the native turtle wild population, it can be speculated that the actual effect is not optimistic.
How can a turtle be worth tens of millions?
Under such a sharp contrast, the news that a turtle was hyped to the value of tens of millions of dollars appeared endlessly. In fact, this matter and the "turtle" species itself does not have much to do with, in essence, it is a kind of swimming market capital to find investment objects, through artificial speculation of its scarcity, conceal the actual supply and demand of the means to achieve higher prices, attract retail investors to enter the form to achieve the final profit of the behavior. Behind the value, most of the market value bragged out is a bubble. It does not in itself have any substantial production significance and the possibility of circulation. Once the capital chain is broken, the game cannot be played.
How is this game played? Have you ever been affected?
Three-step chess fart, liar, the picture source see the watermark, in addition, the typos in the picture are also their fault.
Around 2010, the turtle market began to rise a hype boom, and this hype chain began with the yellow-rimmed closed-shell turtle.
In that year, after the yellow-edged closed-shell turtle in the Anhui production area was speculated to a bottleneck position of nearly 20,000 yuan a catty, the yellow-edged closed-shell turtle in the originally unpopular Taiwan production area was quickly targeted by capital, and the price rose with the rising tide, and finally led to the poaching of the yellow-edged closed-shell turtle with a very rich wild population in Taiwan, which also attracted the attention of the international turtle conservation organization and caused a very bad impact in the international community.
2010 fried yellow-rimmed closed shell turtle, picture from the network
Until 2015, the speculation campaign reached its peak, when the speculation target has been directly targeted at the edible variety that has been used as a hard currency in the industry - the yellow-throated water turtle, when the original price was stable at 50 yuan for many years when the shell seedling was raised to 720 yuan, the price of all turtles also rose to a staggering height, and various types of turtles with a value of tens of millions of people appeared on various turtle exhibitions.
In 2015, the yellow-throated water turtle began to be "fried". Image from the web
Among them, the black-necked turtle and the Annan turtle are the most prominent. Due to its undesirable appearance characteristics and fairly simple feeding needs, as well as considerable production capacity (from more than ten per year). Before 2010, the market retail transaction price of these two species of turtles has been maintained at hundreds of yuan and the transaction volume is quite small (market acceptance is low), but after artificial speculation about its scarcity, the considerable production capacity is immediately packaged as an investment point, resulting in its value rapidly climbing to the closed shell turtle species (three-line closed shell turtle, gold-headed closed shell turtle, Baise closed shell turtle) that have been rare due to low production capacity.
In 2016, the capital chain was broken, the game could not continue, resulting in a rapid decline in prices, many people who entered the market in 2015 and prepared to make a fortune lost everything, which also led to the entire commodity turtle market in 2016 and 2017 entering a cold winter period, until this year is still in a difficult state.
In fact, it can be seen from the above cases: the target of hype does not matter whether it is artificial breeding or wild individuals, as long as there is a selling point that can be packaged, it can be hyped.
Listen to it to be able to get rich, who is still editing the public account here.
Similar speculation activities have actually been common since the reform and opening up of the Chinese mainland, as far as the Junzilan that was wildly hyped in the northeast at the end of the last century, to the later sky-high price of Chinese orchids, in recent years, mahogany fever, turtle fever, all of which are the gameplay of changing soup and not changing medicine. The impact of this practice on the industry of the target species is very bad and far-reaching, just like the "turtle fever", under the curtain of hype, many native wild turtles have fallen into a desperate situation that is difficult to return to.
We have no intention of letting lovers give up the love of playing with turtles, but in addition to playing, we hope that everyone will have more sober cognition and rational protection of them. If you care, pay more attention to their wild populations. In response to the chaos of the market, we call for more powerful market supervision; for the urgent protection, they need better laws and regulations and more attention.
Turtles are born for a hundred years and should not be destroyed in one fell swoop.
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