Reptile & Amphibian Forums

HAARETZ (Tel Aviv, Israel) 20 September 05 Wildlife reserves return endangered turtles to central plain (Eli Ashkenazi)
Photo: Yoram Malka of the INNPPA holding baby turtles to be released into the Ein Afek reserve. (Yaron Kaminsky)
Yoram Malka, an employee of the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority (INNPPA), held up a few baby turtles for the cameras surrounding him. Giselle Hazan, of the Ein Afek Nature Reserve, was already waiting joyously in the wings. Malka was on the verge of transferring 17 of the tiny charges he had hatched, raised and guarded to the new reserve, which was awaiting their arrival.
The transfer of the Nile soft-shelled turtles (Trionyx triunguis) to the Ein Afek reserve is another step to save the species from going extinct in the coastal plain rivers. The goal is to wean them from their shelter in the Hula Nature Reserve, which is not their natural habitat.
The soft-shelled turtle has a flat body, an elongated neck and bulging eyes. Its brown, white-spotted coloring provides ample camouflage. All of these characteristics assist the turtle in obtaining food, as it buries itself in mud and stretches its neck to capture passing prey.
Feared to be in imminent danger of extinction in Israel, the soft-shelled turtle was brought to the Hula reserve by the INNPPA and zoologist Heinrich Mendelson in the late 1960s and early 1970s in order to save it from the increasing pollution in the coastal plain rivers. At that time the species was disappearing at an alarming rate, and was placed on the endangered list in the Mediterranean region. Hunting, predators, habitat destruction and river pollution reduced the population in Israel to about 100 animals.
The turtle is still on the endangered list, but the move to the Galilee region revived the population, which had disappeared from the coastal plain.
Talia Oren, an ecologist at the Upper Galilee regional branch of INNPPA, said, "The belief then was that the turtles would be safe in a nature reserve. But they were not aware that there are no turtles of this type in Israel's eastern basin. The turtles were comfortable here and they multiplied, but over the years it became clear that they were detrimental to the local ecosystem."
Turtles were observed climbing the banks, where they damaged a variety of nesting sites, at times eating seagull eggs, and caused widespread damage to the ecosystem due to their predatorial nature.
Several of these turtles even escaped the reserve and were observed in other bodies of water in the north. A highly motivated turtle was spotted in the far-off Jordan Valley. It had crossed the entire Sea of Galilee and moved south, to march the entire length of the Kibbutz Degania Aleph perimeter road.
According to Oren, "We now recognize that the turtle is an intrusive species in the Galilee that must be removed from the ecosystem. We must assist nature and repair the damage." The "expulsion" of soft-shelled turtles from the Hula reserve is accompanied by renewed hope that they will survive the transfer to their natural habitat in coastal plain rivers, where their presence is no longer guaranteed.
Some of the turtles were trapped in nets dropped into the water for this purpose, but most were caught before they hatched. Female turtles lay and bury their eggs at night on the dirt paths in the Hula reserve. Malka gathers the healthy, intact eggs in the morning, hoping that they have not been crushed by water buffaloes or eaten by mongooses. Malka uses a prodder to uncover the nests and carefully collects the eggs, which resemble ping-pong balls, in a bucket full of local earth. If he places an egg in the bucket upside-down, the turtle's fate is sealed and the egg will not hatch. The eggs are taken to an incubator, where natural nesting conditions are perfectly reproduced: under sunlight, in natural earth, in a confined area.
After 60-70 days, the eggs hatch and the tiny turtles run swiftly toward the water - in this case, small pools placed near the incubator. Later, the turtles are to be transferred to coastal rivers, including the Sorek, Neeman, Yarkon and Kishon rivers. (They will be introduced at the northern, clean end of the Kishon.)
There are now about 100 turtles in the Alexander River, which marks a resounding success for the project. In 1992, the population in the Alexander took a severe blow when heavy flooding swept many of the turtles to the sea while they were hibernating. However, the population in the river has restored itself since then.
The INNPPA intends to keep 30 turtles captive in cages in the water of the Hula reserve. When they grow, they will be released in the rivers with tagging devices, and perhaps, even satellite broadcasters. "That way," Oren says, "we will be able to follow them, and gather information that we still do not have, like the percentage that survives, and migration between rivers and the sea."
Wildlife reserves return endangered turtles to central plain

For years, you have been my hero on ecological/turtle news. How do you find all these releases?????

Erico;
Thank you for the kind words .... and if you'll indulge the length of what follows, this is how I do Herp Press postings ...

Herp Press Postings
Dear Herp Friends;

My herp press postings are the result of a 1994 mailing of a toad-related clipping to Ellin Beltz … then the ‘Herp News’ editor for the late-lamented Vivarium magazine. I got into the habit of sending her clippings from local papers, a vice that accelerated with the arrival of the Internet. Since about 2001, I’ve been posting herp-related press items to a variety of e-forums and magazines/journals; of which Kingsnake.com is the dominant target, as I find them and time allows.

I have one of those unique careers that serve two functions: it puts food on the table AND lets me support my hobby ... sort of. One of my morning tasks as an Army staff officer in the headquarters is to skim through 60 English-language on-line newspapers (as well as some French and German ones) to determine where the next international crisis and possible peacekeeping commitment is coming from. So, while we're skimming for Chechnya, Iraq, PNG, Bosnia and Sierra Leone; we also pick up everything we can on snake, reptile, frog, turtle, alligator, caiman, etc ... you catch the drift.

The herp-press items which appear to be most 'newsworthy' in this modest newt-keepers personal opinion or forum-experience get posted to various internet forums immediately as I find them ... the idea being that if the appropriate, specialist community hears a rumour of a herp-event on the old-boy net, they can get the original newspaper item in good time and be able to react accordingly. Besides passing information, I hope it can be used as a warning tripwire for "geesh, here it comes again *bad news* herp items" that can affect the whole community. A specialist forum is probably the best place to discuss the good/bad elements of any press story, and to offer our concerned but less experienced herping-peers a good, reasoned and (hopefully) scientific response to any press initiative.

Within Kingsnake.com’s unique venue, I try to post ‘general herp news’ to the Herp News forum, and items that ‘feature’ a specific species to the appropriate forum for ‘specialist’ discussion. (A python escape and reaction story may find it’s concurrent way to the Burm Python; Herp News and Herp Law forums).

The press - good or bad - is already out there in the open-non-herp-keeping community. If we have the original item, we are all working off of the same problem and can discuss the 'facts' of the matter (as much as the press have given us anyway) and avoid trying to talk to each other about "a friend of mine heard from his boss that xxxx " ... you get the idea.
Please note, I have been accused in various internet forums of only posting 'bad news' or ‘depressing news’. I stand guilty, but please note that I could only post what is printed ... and I tried not to editorialise or cull items. Naturally, with internet forums specializing in python/venom/crotalid/elapid's, the press only tends to print "Seven year old's pet caiman eats Volkswagen full of lawyers" stories ... unlike Frog and Turtle forums that tend to get a lot of good or scientific press. Some forums, like Gilas, get almost no press at all! (Which is not necessarily a bad thing). If I seemed to be on a run of bad news in any particular forum, it’s generally because of either the subject (when was the last time somebody wrote something nice in press about ‘Puddles the Python’ or ‘Snuffles the friendly, Oz salti’?) or maybe there’s been something dramatic that the press has jumped on lately.

And if you’ll allow me a side-note on posting protocol. My modest experience with press and newspaper organisations from 1994 is that, and this is important, the stories do fall under copyright laws of at least the US, UK and Canada, and are the private property of their respective papers and services. Reposting their items is frowned upon … and reposting photos is a distinct no-no. However … my communications with various press authorities in the US and UK have resulted in an ‘indulgence’ … as long as I attribute originating paper, press service, author and URL and don’t post for my own or another’s personal gain, my press postings are viewed as an educational effort and will be ‘tolerated’ (or at least benevolently ignored).

Basically, I’m a newt keeping paperboy … my modest expertise lies with critters other than yours, but I do consider myself turtle ‘friendly’. I’m just trying the ensure that specialist forums have timely notice of what is in the public venue about their unique charges.

Respectfully;
Wes von Papineäu
Gloucester, Canada

NOW I KNOW!!!! After all therse years, a mystery has been solved! It goes without saying, that you MUST keep it up. There are items here that would never come to our attention otherwise. erico