papuaconservation

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Funzo is a resident pig-nosed turtle at the National Aquarium’s Animal Care and Rescue Center. To celebrate his 28th birthday on Tuesday, the aquarium tweeted a picture of the adorable, introverted reptile to its more than 50,000 followers.

And then the comments came.

DISGUSTING
get rid of it https://t.co/uuRH9V5Zz4

— Speview – fat free (@ReviewerSpell) January 5, 2022

 

Thats an anteater https://t.co/Sgl4XRTvb3

— NICK (@nickgrodo) January 5, 2022

Even former Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith joined in. Smith eventually redeemed himself with a shoutout to the aquarium.

It’s #TurtleTuesday and we’re wishing a very happy 28th birthday to Funzo the pig-nosed turtle! pic.twitter.com/9rHhzaRYip

— National Aquarium (@NatlAquarium) January 4, 2022

Fortunately, Funzo didn’t see the tweets. All he feels is the love he gets at the care center, where he is a sort of celebrity, according to the aquarium.

Funzo has been with the National Aquarium since 2002 but has been out of the busy exhibit habitat since 2011. The aquarium said he much prefers a quieter space – his pool at the care center.

Animal Care and Rescue Center tours began with National Aquarium members in 2018, and while some Twitter users aren’t so kind, he’s a favorite with guests touring the facility, the aquarium said.

For each negative comment Funzo got – and there are a lot – a few diehard fans were born. Soon enough, Funzo had dozens of well-wishers, including Baltimore staples.

Not to get all political or anything, but Downtown Partnership is #teamfunzo #justiceforfunzo https://t.co/zhUOhEr5MW

— Downtown Partnership of Baltimore (@DowntownBalt) January 5, 2022

from one iconic nose to another…#justiceforfunzo https://t.co/OTdwZUivGA

— Babe Ruth Birthplace (@BabeRuthMuseum) January 5, 2022

According to EDGE of Existence, a global conservation program, the pig-nosed turtle is “the sole surviving member of its entire family, Carettochelyidae, and sits alone on a branch of the tree of life reaching back around 140 million years.”

Unlike other freshwater turtles, turtles like Funzo have flippers and a leathery shell, not to mention their snoutlike nose.

According to the aquarium, pig-nosed turtles are found in northern Australia, Irian Jaya and southern New Guinea. Funzo’s kind was once believed to be extremely rare but was found to be common in its range.

Funzo is an incredibly unique turtle with a storied lineage who prefers to mind his business in the swimming pool rather than engage with his detractors online. Baltimore is lucky to have him.

So please be nice to him.

 

Source : cbsnews.com

The pig-nosed turtle, an endangered freshwater turtle native to the Northern Territory and southern New Guinea, is unique in many respects.

Unlike most freshwater turtles, it’s almost completely adapted to life in water. It has paddle-like flippers similar to sea turtles, a snorkel-like “pig-nose” to help it breathe while staying submerged, and eggs that will only hatch when exposed to the waters of the wet season.

It’s also the last surviving species of a group of tropical turtles called the carettochelyids, which once lived throughout the northern hemisphere. Scientists thought pig-nosed turtles only arrived at Australia within the past few millennia, as no pig-nosed turtle fossils had ever been found here – or so we thought.

A five-million-year-old fossil from Museums Victoria’s collections has now completely rewritten this story. Discovered at Beaumaris, 20km southeast of Melbourne, this fossil lay unidentified in Melbourne Museum’s collection for almost 100 years until our team came across it.

We identified the fossil as a small section of the front of a pig-nosed turtle’s shell, as we report this week in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Although the fossil is just a fragment, we were lucky it was from a very diagnostic area of the shell.

The fossil shows that carettochelyid turtles have been living in Australia for millions of years. But what was a pig-nosed turtle doing in Beaumaris five million years ago, thousands of kilometres from their modern range?

Well, in the past, Melbourne’s weather was a lot warmer and wetter that it is now. It was more akin to the tropical conditions in which these turtles live today.

In fact, this isn’t the first prehistoric tropical species discovered here – monk seals, which today live in Hawaii and the Mediterranean, and dugongs also once lived in what is now Beaumaris.

 

Source : lens.monash.edu

Pig-nosed turtles are found in tropical freshwater ecosystems in northern Australia and New Guinea, only arriving here a few thousand years ago.

But now, scientists have discovered a five-million-year old Pig-nosed turtle fossil in Melbourne, thousands of kilometres south from their typical home.

The finding is outlined in a study led by Monash University biologists, in collaboration with Museums Victoria, published today in Papers in Palaeontology.

Pig-nosed turtles are endangered, and the sole survivors of an extinct group of tropical turtles from the Northern Hemisphere.

The fossil housed in Melbourne Museum was discovered at Beaumaris, a bayside Melbourne suburb 20 km from the CBD, and completely rewrites the evolution of Pig-nosed turtles.

“Almost the entire evolutionary history of Pig-nosed turtles occurred in the northern hemisphere, with their present limited occurrence on the northern margin of Australia,” said lead study author Dr James Rule, from the Monash University School of Biological Sciences.

“The discovery of a five million-year-old Pig-nosed turtle fossil in Beaumaris changes this picture entirely,” he said.

It points to a broader pattern of turtles migrating across entire oceans in the ancient past to reach the once tropical waters of southern Australia.

“This one fossil specimen reveals a previously unknown evolutionary history of tropical turtles in Australia, and suggests we still have much to learn about the endangered Pig-nosed turtle,” Dr Rule said.

Five million years ago, the climate in Melbourne was far warmer and was home to turtles found only in the tropics today.

“Climate change in the last few million years eliminated these tropical habitats, leaving the northern Australasian Pig-nosed turtles as sole survivors,” Dr Rule said.

“Our discovery provides key insights into ancient climate change shaping modern species distribution.”

This fossil is the latest important discovery to come from the Beaumaris fossil site.

“We are so lucky in Melbourne to have such fossils right here in our own backyard,” said Dr Erich Fitzgerald, a senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology at Museums Victoria and co-author of the paper.

“The fossils at Beaumaris still have so much to teach us about our past, present and future.”

 

Source : onash.edu

Port Moresby Nature Park has celebrated a remarkable achievement for conservation with the successful release of 27 endangered pig-nosed turtles back into the wild.

This brings the total number of turtles released by the Nature Park to 45. The release wraps up a five-year conservation project managed by the Nature Park and funded by ExxonMobil PNG Limited (EMPNG) in collaboration with the Piku Biodiversity Network, University of Canberra and Wau Creek Conservation Area. This was the final release of turtles that were taken into the care of the Park, with 15 turtles released in September of the previous year.

Port Moresby Nature Park’s Curator, Brett Smith, explained that “the ‘Head Start program’ is where newborn animals are collected from the wild where their chance of survival in the wild is lowest. They are then safely cared for in suitable facilities while they grow bigger and stronger before being returned to the wild with a much higher chance of survival”.

Pig-nosed turtles are a freshwater species native to Northern Australia, Indonesian West Papua and Papua New Guinea. They are categorised as “endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species due primarily to illegal smuggling and overhunting.

From birth, their chance of survival in the wild is less than 1 percent as their tiny size, around 5cm, makes them vulnerable to predators such as fish, crocodiles and birds. It is also the reason that there is not much known about their behaviour in the earlier stage of life.

The return of the pig-nosed turtles was a carefully coordinated activity involving months of planning. Port Moresby Nature Park teamed with EMPNG, Tropicair, PNG’s Conservation and Environment Protection Authority, Local Level Government leaders, local community groups and Frank John, the local conservationist from Wau Creek Conservation Area, to ensure that the release of the 27 turtles went smoothly.

Tropicair flew the turtles from Port Moresby to Kikori, Gulf Province, accompanied by Brett Smith and Ishimu Bebe, Port Moresby Nature Park’s Wildlife Manager. They were specially housed in individual holding tubs to ensure that they travelled comfortably, before being transferred onto a boat for a 2.5-hour ride to Wau Creek where they had been collected five years earlier while still in their eggs.

“By our best estimates and in consultation with experts in this species, the program will increase their chances of survival in the wild to about 30 percent, significantly up from the 1 percent chance that they would have had without this conservation project,” Smith remarked.

“The return of these 27 endangered turtles back to their birthplace at Wau Creek was an emotional event for Mr. Frank John and family as well as for EMPNG. The strong partnership we have established has led to an important contribution to protecting the pig-nosed turtle,” said Julia Hagoria, EMPNG’s Biodiversity Advisor.

“This project highlights what PNG can achieve to conserve its unique biodiversity when communities, scientists, government and industry collaborate and partnerships come together.”

Port Moresby Nature Park’s CEO, Michelle McGeorge, noted: “Our special thanks go to all project partners and individuals involved, including PNG LNG Project who, through its ongoing funding support and commitment to bringing numerous partners together, enabled this conservation program to help save one of the most unique turtles in the world.”

Despite battling a lack of visitors because of the coronavirus pandemic the Port Moresby Nature Park continues to forge ahead with the rehabilitation and rescue of Papua New Guinea’s animals.

The Park’s chief executive Michelle McGeorge said in August visitation was down by 70 per cent.

“In order to sustain operations ideally we need 100 per cent capacity so we did launch a GoFundMe campaign in June,” she said.

The online fundraiser has so far raised more than $200,000 which is just over half what Ms McGeorge says the park needs to operate.

“Our target was to pay for 10 months of our wildlife expenses,” she said.

“I’m not only responsible for 550 animals but at the end of the day I’m responsible for 70 staff and their livelihoods.”

The park accepts injured and surrendered wildlife in the hopes of rehabilitating them and releasing them back into the wild, or keeping them in the Park as their ‘forever home’.

One type of animal the park has spent the last five years rehabilitating is the endangered pig nose turtle.

The freshwater turtle, named for it’s snout-like nose, is hunted for it’s ‘uniqueness’ by illegal pet traders.

The Park hatched 47 turtle eggs and helped grow the population until releasing some back into the wild last year, and the rest this year amid the pandemic.

Asia’s tortoises and freshwater turtles suffer greatly from illegal, unregulated trade, with many pushed towards extinction. Among these is the pig-nosed turtle Carettochelys insculpta, harvested to meet the demand for international pet trade, and for local meat consumption and use in traditional medicines. Monitor Conservation Research Society and the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group examined reported seizures over the period 2013 to 2020, looking at contemporary trade networks and hubs, mapped routes, assessed successful prosecutions, and in the process, flagged failures to utilise existing tools to better protect the species. Loopholes in current legislation exploited by traders were also scrutinised.

In the study period, 26 seizures amounting to 52,374 individuals were analysed, with Indonesia emerging as the greatest source of the species entering illegal trade, both within Indonesia and internationally. Most of these incidents occurred in Papua Province (19,700 individuals) and Greater Jakarta, including the Soekarno Hatta International Airport. Internationally, 10,956 pig-nosed turtles were seized in six separate incidents originating from Indonesia.

While the pig-nosed turtle is listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and is totally protected in Indonesia, only nine of the 26 cases examined were successfully prosecuted – but never to the full extent of the law, which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence and a fine of USD7,132. Offenders rarely received penalties close to the maximum; the highest prison sentence issued was approximately half the potential maximum.

“The lack of enforcement and meaningful deterrents for offenders undermines efforts to protect the species and renders attempts at legal and sustainable trade useless,” said Dr Chris R. Shepherd, the study’s lead author. “Indonesia has legislation and regulations in place to protect pig-nosed turtles from over-exploitation, but these tools are ineffectual if they are not put to use.”

The possibility of bogus captive breeding operations, given the time and resources required in breeding pig-nosed turtles in captivity to the second generation, was also flagged. “In all likelihood, the turtles declared as captive-bred are all wild-caught or ranched, and falsely declared as being captive-bred to circumvent restrictions and enable export to countries where the checking of the source of the imported animals is lax,” said Dr. Vincent Nijman, study co-author. Laundering wild-caught reptiles under the guise of captive breeding in Indonesia is well-documented but needs further investigation.

The authors also question how 5,240 turtles were exported as wild-caught, in direct violation of Indonesia’s legislation, including 80 into the United States of America, in possible violation of the US Lacey Act. The vast majority were destined for mainland China and Hong Kong. All importing countries and territories identified in this study are Party to CITES and are obligated to ensure that trade in this species is carried out in a legal manner. Perhaps elevating this species to Appendix I of CITES would assist all three range states in obtaining stronger cooperation from other CITES Parties in the effort to prevent illegal international trade in this species.

Indonesia is evidently in urgent need of a robust strategy to effectively tackle the illegal trade in pig-nosed turtles, from point of collection to sale. Better use of existing legislation and effective scrutiny of traders claiming to commercially breed such species is essential to obstruct illegal trade and to ultimately better protect pig-nosed turtles.

Illegal wildlife trade, seizures and prosecutions: a 7.5-year analysis of trade in Pig-nosed Turtles Carettochelys insculpta in and from Indonesia by Chris R. Shepherd, Lalita Gomez and Vincent Nijman was published in Global Ecology and Conservation.

Source : mcrsociety.org

 

Source : scimex.org

Endangered turtles returned to the wild

Fifteen endangered pig-nosed turtles have pioneered the first ever fresh water turtle wildlife release of its kind in Papua New Guinea.

The pig-nosed turtles made the trip from Port Moresby Nature Park in the capital to the Gulf Province via plane and then by boat where they were released into a side estuary of the Kikori River.

In 2015 the Nature Park ambitiously launched a number of animal breeding and research programs, including the commitment to take on 47 pig-nosed turtle hatchlings from the Kikori Delta region to study the growth rates of this little-studied species.  The research project is being done in partnership with the University of Canberra and the Piku Biodiversity Network through direct sponsorship by ExxonMobil PNG.

The ‘head-start’ program was the first ever attempted initiative to study these species.  The focus was on determining the turtles’ growth rates. This has required the Nature Park’s Wildlife Department to measure weekly the shell width and weight of each. In the wild, newly hatched turtles have about a one percent chance of survival to adulthood.

The pig-nosed turtles had been safely living and growing in the Nature Park free from predators until they have reached a size large enough to have a better chance of survival from one percent at birth to now up to thirty percent.

The next stage of the project was to return the turtles to their birth place. Accompanying the pig-nosed turtles on the trip back to Kikori was Conservation and Environment Protection Authority’s Wildlife, Trade & Enforcement Officer Nicho Gowep, Nature Park’s Wildlife Keeper Emma Oliver and professional photographer Vanessa Kerton from madNESS Photography.

Port Moresby Nature Park’s General Manager said: “The success of the release program was made possible through the support of one of our major partners, ExxonMobil PNG, through the Head Start Program in partnership with the University of Canberra. The Nature Park was able to research growth rates of the pig-nosed turtles since 2015 and we are delighted to see these turtles released back into the wild.”

Michelle McGeorge also added: “The Park will continue to spearhead programs like this to help ensure that we are doing our bit in preserving the wildlife of this beautiful land. This is research never undertaken before that we will publish in scientific journals to share valuable information to field researchers and conservationists and also to international organisations such as TRAFFIC, who closely monitor the illegal movements of pig-nosed turtles, particularly in SE-Asia where there is a lot of pressure on pig-nosed turtles.”

The remaining pig-nosed turtles at the Park will soon be joining those recently released. The second group to be released will also be radio tagged and tracked to monitor their movements when released.

(CEPA’s Wildlife, Trade & Enforcement Officer Nicho Gowep releasing a piku turtle)

Source : looppng.com

Authorities in Papua province said they seized 2,227 of the palm-sized turtles which were stuffed into boxes on a boat docked in the remote town of Agats.

A  man has been arrested for trying to smuggle 2,000 endangered pig-nosed turtles, police said, marking the latest wildlife-trafficking arrest as the Southeast Asian nation battles the vast trade. Authorities in Papua province said they seized 2,227 of the palm-sized turtles which were stuffed into boxes on a boat docked in the remote town of Agats. “Officers saw a port worker carrying three big boxes and got suspicious,” Papua police spokesman Ahmad Musthofa Kamal said late Thursday. “This is protected species and they are not for sale.” Following the discovery, police arrested another man believed to be involved in the trafficking bid. The port worker was not detained.

If convicted, the arrested man could face up to five years in prison and a 100 million rupiah ($7,000) fine, police said. It was not clear where the turtle shipment was headed. The pig-nosed turtle — which has a distinctive snout-like nose and webbed feet — is only found in Australia and New Guinea, an island shared between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and is protected under Indonesian conservation laws. Some turtle species are popular in China and elsewhere in Asia as food or for use in traditional medicine. In 2014, Indonesian officials rescued more than 8,000 baby pig-nosed turtles hidden in suitcases and thought to be destined for China and Singapore.

This year, smugglers were arrested in neighbouring Malaysia with some 3,300 endangered turtles aboard their boat. Indonesia, an archipelago of some 17,000 islands, is home to a kaleidoscope of exotic animals and plants, but the illegal trade in wildlife is rampant and laws aimed at providing protection are often poorly enforced. Numerous endangered species, from the Sumatran elephant to the Javan rhino, have been driven to the brink of extinction.