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St. Lucie County, Florida, Turtle Preserve/Farm Closes, Despite Successes

By Joe Crankshaw, www.tcpalm.com,,9/9/08



ST. LUCIE COUNTY - Al Weinberg dreamed of a day when endangered turtles would be bred in the United States and reintroduced to their old habitats, or preserved in zoos and collections.



He stood at the center of the largest rescue operation of endangered turtles in the world on his western St. Lucie County turtle farm seven years ago.



Today, he looks out at the ruins of his turtle ponds and warehouses on his soon-to-close Allapattah Flats Turtle Preserve at the western end of Glades Cut-Off Road, and recalls the praises of people who now shun him.



In spite of the retired Bronx firefighter's efforts to help preserve rare turtle species, his farm is falling apart, and his turtles almost all gone - victims of his inability to care for the expansive area after the death of his wife, Jacquie; two hurricanes and the "bad guy" image among the very people with whom he worked in 2001.



Those people spent six weeks on his property sorting and treating the endangered turtle species from the jungle of southeast Asia.



The turtles had been saved from Chinese cooking pots and later found homes in the zoos, preserves and private collections of the world.



"But I was bad guy because I had been in the (commercial) business of importing and selling turtles," said Weinberg.



Lori Green, executive director of Turtle Homes, the largest turtle resettlement organization in the United States, called the turn of events a "great loss to turtle conservation in the world."



And that's from someone who once listed herself as Weinberg's enemy.



"He was a dealer, someone who sold turtles trapped in other countries," said the woman whose organization has operational facilities in Okeechobee and has a headquarters in Las Vegas. "I was a conservationist committed to stopping that practice. But he started breeding rare turtles that were almost extinct, and he did what no one else was doing. What happened to him was just politics, all politics in the environmental field."



Green said Weinberg was the only successful breeder of the Vietnamese Pond turtle, scimauremys annamensis. The turtle is now virtually extinct in Vietnam.



The demise of Weinberg's preserve is partly due to jealousy because he was succeeding at breeding rare turtles "by the bucketsful, while the zoos were doing only one or two a year," said David Lee, curator emeritus of a North Carolina museum and director of Tortoise Rescue Inc., a nonprofit conservation group in White Lake, N.C.



"He was way ahead of the curve in breeding rare turtles," he said.



Weinberg had 7,000 turtles in 22 ponds on his seven acres when he was asked to help save turtles in China.



His bustling preserve was the only facility in the United States that could handle 3,844 turtles seized from smugglers in Hong Kong in December 2001, rescue officials said. More than 7,000 turtles had been saved from Chinese food markets, but there were no places to keep and treat them in Asia. A large number were too sick to survive and would die. About 1,000 turtles went to facilities in Europe, sent by the Fort Worth Zoo, which organized the rescue effort.



A private turtle specialist, Weinberg offered his turtle breeding farm because he believed in the need to rescue and perpetuate endangered species. He knew his turtle breeding and sales program would take a hit while the operation was under way, he said.



By January 2001, Weinberg and others concerned about the future of turtles thought they were on the verge of a new millennia in which zoos, scientific and commercial interests would cooperate to save threatened species.



He was named to the board of the Turtle Survival Alliance and directed the preservation of one species of rare turtle.



"I thought common sense had taken hold and the commercial and zoo interests would be able to cooperate," he said. "After all, we had the turtles and ability to breed them, while they had the expertise to maintain and display them."



But, according to Lee, "the zoo people could not understand the commercial people and vice versa."



Two years later, after the alliance received some large grants, it wrote guidelines to exclude anyone involved in the importation of rare turtles or any other wild species.



Suddenly, Weinberg was on the outside looking in.



"(The leaders of the alliance) didn't care," said Green. "They used his facilities for the rescue and ... left him with a lot of bills and a mess to clean up."



She said the split between Weinberg and the alliance was because zoos have a system of keeping careful breeding records, while commercial breeders just put a species in a pond and let nature take its course.



Kurt Buhlmann, Ph.D., one of the founding co-chairs of the Turtle Survival Alliance, had high praise for Weinberg and said he is sorry if Weinberg has been hurt by activities within the alliance, which he said has been having "growing pains."



Buhlmann said he has always favored including everyone possible in the alliance, but that there are some people who don't subscribe to that view and who were "rubbed the wrong way" by Weinberg's outspokenness.



"I have always hoped that Al's property could become a part of the overall plan. A place where turtles could be cared for, bred and then given to institutions, collectors or returned to their native lands if the habitat remained."



Weinberg admits he's bitter that he has to close his preserve.



"I still like turtles," he said as he walked around the wreckage of his once prosperous land, "but I am through with them. I once hoped to help save endangered species by breeding them here and then reintroducing them into areas where there is still habitat for them."

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