THE OKLAHOMAN (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) 09 April 08 Turtle harvest unsustainable (Jeff Miller Miller is conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco)
In "Saving the turtles goes slow, steady” (news story, March 29), the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation asserted that the turtle trade is "self-regulated,” implying there is no problem with over harvest. An ODWC biologist also told the media, "I don't think it's an immediate concern now. There's no data to show an immediate threat.”
Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is clear evidence of unregulated turtle harvest in Oklahoma causing declines of wild turtle populations and there is a very real and immediate threat to human health from people eating turtles harvested from Oklahoma waters contaminated with mercury, PCBs and pesticides.
Under current Oklahoma law, a single person can virtually harvest every nonprotected turtle in the state and sell them for profit. The biology of freshwater turtles makes them extremely vulnerable to over harvest — turtles simply cannot be managed like fish without leading to population extinctions. Turtle populations can literally take decades to recover from a single harvest event by one person. For example, Georgia listed the alligator snapping turtle as a statewide threatened species due to the turtle harvesting of a single trapper. Turtle trappers in Oklahoma can legally deploy an unlimited number of hoopnets and box traps, which are ruthlessly efficient and have high by-catch. Other animals incidentally taken and drowned in these nets include protected alligator snapping turtles, aquatic mammals, federally protected migratory birds and the American alligator, which exists on the periphery of its western most range in southeastern Oklahoma. ODWC law enforcement has also documented a number of abuses of the current permit system.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation sponsored a statewide turtle population density survey that was conducted by Oklahoma State University in 1997. The survey results published in 2001 showed that many freshwater turtle species in Oklahoma are depleted and many have even been driven extinct in some streams, particularly the Deep Fork, Kiamichi, Mountain Fork and Little Rivers.
Fish in numerous lakes and other waters in Oklahoma are known to be contaminated with unsafe levels of methyl mercury, and turtles can bioaccumulate toxins at much higher concentrations than fish. At least 740,000 wild caught turtles were purchased by buyers in Oklahoma from 1994 to 1999, and sold to food markets in the United States and Southeast Asia for consumption.
The commercial turtle harvest in Oklahoma is unsustainable and the sale of contaminated turtles as food poses a substantial public health risk.
Turtle harvest unsustainable