From: Center for Biological Diversity

Conservation, Health Groups Petition Four Southern States to End Commercial Harvest of Freshwater Turtles

TUCSON, AZ—) TUCSON, Ariz.— Conservation and health groups are seeking to end unsustainable commercial harvest of freshwater turtles in four southern states and to stop the export of contaminated turtles to international food markets. The Center for Biological Diversity today filed emergency petitions with the states of Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas to ban commercial turtle harvesting in public and private waters, to prevent further population declines of native southern turtle populations, and to protect public health. Turtles collected in these states and sold as food are often contaminated with mercury, PCBs, and pesticides.

Wildlife exporters and dealers are commercially harvesting massive and unsustainable numbers of wild freshwater turtles from Oklahoma, Florida, and Georgia, the few southern states that continue to allow unlimited and unregulated take of turtles. Herpetologists have reported drastic reductions in numbers and even the disappearance of many southern map turtle species in Georgia and Florida, especially in the panhandle. Recent surveys by Oklahoma State University show depletions and extinction of freshwater turtles in many Oklahoma streams, and commercial turtle buyers in Oklahoma reported purchasing almost 750,000 wild-caught turtles from 1994 to 1999. Over a quarter million wild-caught adult turtles captured in Texas were exported from Dallas Fort Worth Airport to Asia for human consumption from 2002 to 2005.

“Unregulated commercial trappers are capturing appalling numbers of freshwater turtles in southern states, including rare map turtle species that are so depleted they may need protection under the Endangered Species Act,“ said Jeff Miller, conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. ”Collectors could legally harvest every non-protected turtle that exists in the wild under the inadequate regulations that currently exist in Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. These turtles are an important part of aquatic ecosystems and should not be allowed to be wiped out.” [+]

source: ENN News