AFP (Paris, France) 06 October 04 China's thirst for turtle soup devastating Asian species
Bangkok (AFP): China imports more than half a million wild turtles every year from Asia for exotic soups despite a conservation crisis that has seen numbers plummet.
Asia has about 90 species of freshwater turtle with two-thirds of them listed as endangered or threatened, according to conservation groups gathered in Bangkok for a meeting on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
"Mainly we are seeing the trade in these animals because Chinese communities throughout Asia eat them," Tom de Meulenaer of the CITES secretariat told reporters. "There is too high demand and collapsing resources."
Chinese culinary demand for turtles surged in the 1990s as the economy expanded but has since declined slightly, according to a Chinese government conservation official.
"We have imported about half a million wild turtles this year," Fan Zhiyong told AFP. China has banned the export of its own hard-shell turtles, which the government lists as endangered.
An estimated 20 million turtles were traded internationally in Asia in 1999, according to the World Conservation Union.
As wild turtle numbers fall because of aggressive poaching in countries bordering or close to China such as Vietnam and Thailand, the trade has shifted further afield to Malaysia and particularly Indonesia.
Indonesia has introduced quotas to regulate exports. But conservationists said hundreds of thousands of turtles were still smuggled out of the country each year, with the majority destined for Chinese cooking pots.
Fan said Chinese authorities have launched campaigns urging people not to eat wild turtles and questioning long-held beliefs that turtle meat has health benefits.
Several proposals are on the agenda at the CITES meeting that runs until October 14 aiming to conserve Asian turtles and tortoises from being overexploited for food and the pet trade.
China's thirst for turtle soup devastating Asian species