Hey, thought some of you may like to know this new piece of information...
South Carolina has now limited the number of turtles that can be transported out of the State. For box turtles, that limit is 10 turtles at one time, with a total of 25 per year. If there are other native SC species involved, them and the box turtles may only total 10 at a time and 25 per year. This limit applies to a person or a collection of people operating in concert.
Twenty five box turtles per year is still a lot of box turtles. But, take into account that people often sell wild caught box turtles out of SC in lots of 50! I see hourds of box turtles in the wild down here (seriously, hundreds each year), and this may be one small step towards keeping it that way.
Interestingly, they only list the species as "Terrapene carolina". In other States, the fact that the subspecies is left out of the language means that the regulation applies to all subspecies of "Terrapene carolina". If so, this would cut down on the number of South Carolinians bringing Florida box turtles and gulf coast box turtles home from Florida to sell. That is all totally hypothetical, of course!
Here's the link -
http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess118_2009-2010/bills/3121.htm
