Bulgarian Roma Clan Member Gets Suspended Sentence over Tortoises (Via Herp Digest)

Bulgarian Roma Clan Member Gets Suspended Sentence over Tortoises
1/2/12, Sofia News Agency

The 33 tortoises seized from properties of notorious Roma clan leader Tsar Kiro have been placed at the Gea Chelonia Foundation Tortoise Centre in the vilage of Banya. Photo by BGNES

The court has approved a plea agreement between Sophia Hristova, daughter-in-law of the notorious Roma clan leader Kiril Rashkov, and the prosecution, under which she will get a one year suspended sentence with three years of probation and a fine of BGN 5000 for illegally keeping 33 tortoises.

The 34-year-old woman pleaded guilty to charges of illegally keeping 33 tortoises in the period May 27, 2011 - November 16, 2011 in the Izgorqlata Vodentisa ("The Burnt Mill") locality on the territory of the southern Bulgarian village of Katunitsa.

3 of the 33 land-dwelling reptiles are spur-thighed tortoises, which are included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, while the other 30 are Hermann's tortoises, which are protected under Bulgaria's Biodiversity Conservation Act.

The plea agreement is final and takes effect immediately.

The tortoises have been seized by the state and have been taken to the the Gea Chelonia Foundation Tortoise Center located in the village of Banya.

The reptiles were found in early November, when Bulgarian police officers and archaeologists started inspecting Rashkov's properties in Katunitsa using metal detectors because they had been led to believe that his clan had buried vast amounts of gold there.

However, the authorities only discovered the tortoises instead.

Kiril Rashkov, aka Tsar Kiro, and his clan triggered massive tensions across Bulgaria in September after the murder of a teenager in Katunitsa.

On September 23, a van driven by associates of Rashkov ran down and killed 19-year-old ethnic Bulgarian Angel Petrov.

On November 22, another representative of the notorious Roma clan, Kiril Rashkov-Jr, the grandson of Kiril Rashkov, aka Tsar Kiro, was sentenced to 8 months of imprisonment for issuing a murder threat to Veselin Hristov.

Rashkov-Jr vowed to appeal the verdict.

Tsar Kiro has been placed at the Plovdiv Prison's dispensary and faces the same charges.

200 of the world's rarest tortoises seized from smugglers in Madagascar

Two smugglers bound for Indonesia have been arrested

August 2011: Two hundred of the world's rarest tortoises have been seized in Madagascar, as during an attempt to smuggle them out of the country to Indonsia. Two men have been arrested.

Frontier Police found 26 ploughshare tortoises, 169 radiated tortoises and a spider tortoise in a box and three large bags that were transported directly to the tarmac, circumventing security scanners, according to local media reports.

very rare ploughshare tortoises

Upon scanning the bags, authorities discovered the tortoises hidden inside and proceeded to arrest two men, one of whom had already boarded the flight. The two arrested were a Malagasy and an Indian national.

Just a few hundred left in the wild
All three tortoise species only occur naturally in Madagascar - and there are thought to be only a few hundred ploughshare tortoises left in the wild. All three tortoises are classified by the IUCN as Critically Endangered.

Their international commercial trade is banned under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), yet these species frequently turn up in seizures and are seen for sale in markets of South-East Asia.

Earlier this year, TRAFFIC released the results of its investigations in Thailand, which found more than 100 radiated tortoises, dozens of spider tortoises, and three ploughshare tortoises for sale in markets and online. And in February, authorities in Bangkok arrested an Indonesian national with seven radiated and one ploughshare tortoise in his bags at Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

100 tortoises leave Madagscar each week
A WWF survey published last year showed that ten or more zebu carts filled with about 100 tortoises each are leaving the Mahafaly Plateau in south Madagascar every week, and pointed to ongoing political instability as the driver for the large jump in illegal collection of spider tortoises and radiated tortoises.

‘Those involved in apprehending these criminals in Ivato are to be congratulated,' says Chris Shepherd, deputy regional director of TRAFFIC South East Asia.

‘Responsibility does not lie with Madagascar alone, but also with importing countries. The authorities in Indonesia and other parts of South East Asia should take firm and immediate action against those trading in these species and put an end to this illicit trade.'

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/tortoise-smuggling.html#cr

Malagasy Frontier Police seize Indonesia-bound shipment of 'world's rarest' tortoises (Via HerpDigest)

Malagasy Frontier Police seize Indonesia-bound shipment of 'world's rarest' tortoises
Wednesday, July 27, 2011. Traffic

Antananarivo, Madagascar, 27th July 2011-Authorities in Madagascar on Monday arrested two men and seized close to 200 of some of the world's rarest tortoises that they were trying to smuggle out of Antananarivo's Ivato Airport to Jakarta, Indonesia.

Frontier Police found 26 Ploughshare Tortoises Astrochelys yniphora, 169 Radiated Tortoises Astrochelys radiata and one Spider Tortoise Pyxis arachnoides in a box and three large bags that were transported directly to the tarmac, circumventing security scanners, according to local media reports. 

Upon scanning the bags, authorities discovered the tortoises hidden inside and proceeded to arrest two men, one of whom had already boarded the flight

. The two arrested were a Malagasy and an Indian national. 

Local media have quoted Brunel Razafintsiandraofa, Chief of Border Police, as saying that the smuggler's final destination was Indonesia, via Nairobi and Dubai. He also told press that the principal destination of wildlife trafficked from Madagascar was to South-East Asia.

The shipment includes a stunning number of Ploughshare Tortoises, of which there are only a few hundred left in the wild, making it one of the world's rarest tortoise species. 

All three tortoise species seized are classified by IUCN as Critically Endangered-considered to be facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild-and fully protected by law in Madagascar.

All three occur naturally only in Madagascar. 

Their international commercial trade is also banned under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), yet these species frequently turn up in seizures and are seen for sale in markets of South-East Asia.



This June, TRAFFIC released the results of its investigations in Thailand, which found over a hundred Radiated Tortoises, dozens of Spider Tortoises, and three Ploughshare Tortoises for sale in markets and online. 

In February this year, authorities in Bangkok arrested an Indonesian national with seven Radiated and one Ploughshare Tortoise in his bags at Suvarnabhumi International Airport. 



In August 2010, TRAFFIC also observed these species for sale at an expo in Jakarta. Several large-scale seizures of these tortoises were also made in Malaysia and Thailand in 2010. Most were found stuffed and hidden in luggage smuggled through airports.

A WWF survey published last year showed that ten or more zebu carts filled with around 100 tortoises each are leaving the Mahafaly Plateau in south Madagascar every week, and pointed to ongoing political instability as the driver for the large jump in illegal collection of Spider Tortoises and Radiated Tortoises.

"Those involved in apprehending these criminals in Ivato are to be congratulated," says Chris R. Shepherd, Deputy Regional Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.



"Responsibility does not lie with Madagascar alone, but also with importing countries. The authorities in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia should take firm and immediate action against those trading in these species and put an end to this illicit trade."

Press reports say the turtles were given over to the Water and Forest Services.

Tortoises to the Rescue: Re-wilding to Repair Ecological Damage (via Herp Digest)

Via Herp Digest:

Tortoises to the Rescue: Re-wilding to Repair Ecological Damage - Re-wilding islands and even continents could prove an effective method for reversing ecological catastrophe
By David Biello June 23, 2011, based on paper in April current Biiology

Europeans ate their way through the island nation of Mauritius, most famously eliminating the dodo bird by 1700. Less well known was their effect on the Mauritian island now known as Ile aux Aigrettes, where they exterminated giant skinks and tortoises and logged the native ebony trees for firewood.
In 1965 the largely denuded 25 hectares of the island were declared a nature reserve. But even in the absence of logging, the slow-growing ebony forests failed to thrive. Why? Because they had lost the animals that ate their fruit and dispersed their seeds. So in 2000 scientists relocated four giant tortoises from the nearby Aldabra atoll in the Seychelles, and by 2009 a total of 19 such introduced tortoises roamed the island, eating the large fruits and leaving behind more than 500 dense patches of seedlings. The team reported its results in April in the journal Current Biology.

For this tiny island, at least, rewilding appears to have worked. And that holds out hope for other restoration ecology projects in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in the earth's history. In Europe conservationists have received ?3.1 million to begin bringing bison, bovines and horses back to "abandoned" agricultural lands in places such as western Spain or the Carpathian Mountains. Ecologists have proposed repopulating parts of the U.S. with elephants, which would replace extinct mastodons. The Dutch, for their part, have already built what amounts to a Pleistocene park at Oostvaardersplassen, adding Konik horses and Heck cattle to replace extinct wild horses and cattle.

Of course, humans have a mixed track record when it comes to interfering in natural ecological systems-the introduction of the cane toad to Australia to manage other pests has resulted in a frog march of havoc across the continent. "There are no guarantees when trying to manipulate nature," notes ecologist Mark A. Davis of Macalester College in Minnesota. Others argue that humans should fix what they have broken. "There is no place on this planet that humans have not interfered with, and it is time for us to become actively involved in engineering solutions," says marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland in Australia. "There are no other options except extinction at this point."

Too little done to address trade threat to Asia's tortoises (Via Herp Digest)

Too little done to address trade threat to Asia's tortoises and freshwater turtles

Monday, February 28, 2011/TRAFFIC Newsletter


Seventy experts who gathered in Singapore last week for the Conservation of Asian Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles Workshop to evaluate the current status of these species in Asia found the vast majority of are nearing extinction in the wild, and very little has been done to address the problem.



The meeting reported that illegal and unsustainable trade was the greatest threat to the survival of this highly threatened group of species and found that laws and conventions in place to protect these animals were simply not being enforced.



Chelodina mccordi has almost been wiped out in the wild through demand from the international pet Southeast Asia Tortoises and freshwater turtles are among the world's most threatened groups of animals. Perhaps nowhere is the situation more critical than in Asia.

In a recently released report, Turtles in Trouble: the World's Top 25 Most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles, from the Turtle Conservation Coalition, 68 percent of those that made the list were native to Asia.

Seventy-two of Asia's 86 species of tortoises and freshwater turtles were assessed at the Singapore meeting, which was hosted by Wildlife Reserves Singapore Group and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), in collaboration with the Turtle Survival Alliance, Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, San Diego Zoo Global and the IUCN SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.



The Malaysian Giant Turtle Orlitia borneensis, one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world and found only in Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra, is now listed as Critically Endangered due to illegal collection and export for its meat. The Burmese Star Tortoise Geochelone platynota, endemic to Myanmar, is thought to be possibly extinct in the wild due to relentless poaching for the international pet trade.

Being driven to extinction by unregulated trade

TRAFFIC Southeast Asia Another key finding of the meeting was the need for research to be carried out on wild populations to understand their status in the wild, natural history and current distribution better. 

Experts also highlighted the need for increased monitoring of the trade that is considered the leading threat to all of these species. The urgent need for rescue centres and ex-situ assurance colonies was also raised.

Alarm bells were first sounded for Asia's freshwater tortoises and turtles following a meeting of experts in 1999, held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, alerting the world to what was dubbed the Asian Turtle Crisis. 

Asia's tortoises and freshwater turtles were being harvested in massive quantities to supply the demand for meat and use in traditional medicines, mostly in East Asia. These species are also in demand as pets. Much of the trade is carried out illegally.

Approximately ten years later, experts agai!
n met and found the situation has gone from bad to worse.



Of Asia's 86 species, close to 70 species (approximately 80%) are considered threatened. This is a dramatic increase since these species were assessed in 1999-a 90% increase in the number of Critically Endangered species alone.

While there have been some successes over the past decade, overall the battle is still being lost, said experts who also discussed current threats and prioritized actions necessary to save species from extinction.

"At the current rate of decline, we will lose many of Asia's tortoises and freshwater turtle species forever, if international and national laws and conventions are not enforced," said Chris R. Shepherd, Deputy Regional Director of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia and member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group. 

"Trade is the single greatest threat to tortoises and freshwater turtles - a species group that has been around since the days of the dinosaurs.

Their future is now in the hands of policy makers, enforcement agencies and conservation bodies. To date, efforts to protect these species have been far from adequate. If effort and motivation to save these species is not greatly increased, we are going to lose many of these species ." 

Shepherd urged authorities to make full use of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) under which many of Asia's freshwater turtle and tortoise species are protected.



"The last ten years has shown that while it is possible to save these species from extinction, the threat of trade is still present and ever-growing," said Colin Poole, Director, WCS Regional Hub. 

"Of particular concern is the increasing impact of the pet trade on a number of tortoise species and the growth of the demand for dried carapace from softshell turtles sourced primarily in South Asia."

Notes:
. The status of tortoises and freshwater turtles, as well as other useful information can be viewed by species at the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, at www.iucnredlist.org
. The report, Turtles in Trouble: the World's top 25+ most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles, can be downloaded at http://www.turtlesurvival.org/
Article originally appeared on TRAFFIC (http://www.traffic.org/).
See website for complete article licensing information.

Mini or Massive? (Via Herp Digest)

Mini or Massive? For Turtles and Tortoises, It All Depends on Where You Live
ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2011) -

Biologists from the UCLA Division of Life Sciences have reported the first quantitative evidence for an evolutionary link between habitat and body size in turtles and tortoises.

The study, whose lead author is a high school student volunteer in the laboratory of UCLA evolutionary biologist Michael Alfaro, is currently available online in Biology Letters, a journal of the Royal Society. It will appear in a print edition later this year.

Turtles and tortoises, also called chelonians, represent a diverse group of reptiles that have been present on Earth for more than 200 million years. The 330 species of present-day chelonians can be found dwelling on remote islands, traveling across vast expanses of ocean, and living in desert and freshwater habitats on every major continent.

Even more surprising than the wide variety of places animals call home is the vast disparity in their body sizes. The largest chelonians weigh over 1,000 pounds and are more than 6 feet in length, while the smallest weigh just a few ounces and would easily fit in the palm of your hand.

Combining statistical computer modeling with genetic data and the fossil record, Alfaro, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and his colleagues demonstrated that different environments have specific optimal body sizes for their chelonian inhabitants.

These researchers act as "evolutionary detectives," piecing together how the tremendous diversity in living chelonians today evolved from a common ancestor that lived millions of years ago. DNA sequences from modern chelonians provide important clues for determining the evolutionary path followed by their progenitors, said co-author Graham Slater, a National Science Foundation-funded UCLA postdoctoral scholar in ecology and evolutionary biology.

The results show a surprisingly strong statistical correlation between habitat change and significant adjustments in body size. Chelonians living in marine or island habitats have an optimal body size several times larger than their cousins on the mainland, said first author Alexander Jaffe, a high school student at Harvard-Westlake School in North Hollywood, Calif. Marine turtles have the largest optimal shell length (about 4.5 feet), followed by island tortoises (approximately 2.5 feet), while freshwater and mainland chelonians are several times smaller (roughly 1 foot).

Evolutionary biologist have long assumed there is a connection between habitat and body size in chelonians, but it was not possible until recently to show quantitative evidence for the relationship, Alfaro said.

Chelonians have had a special place in the history of evolutionary biology due to the attention given them in the writings of Charles Darwin, Alfaro said.

Giant island tortoises found in the Galapagos and Seychelles provide a classic example of "island gigantism," a well-observed phenomenon in which an island-dwelling species evolves to be much larger than its mainland counterparts. Because they provide uniquely isolated habitats, islands are regarded as natural experiments in evolutionary biology, according to Alfaro.

"Our study was focused on testing whether there was any evolutionary signal in support of the idea that being on islands allowed the tortoises to evolve large size," he said.

While it is clear that habitat is an important signal in the chelonian evolutionary tree, the specific ecological conditions that trigger the change in body size are more difficult to determine, Alfaro said.

One of the oldest groups of reptiles, marine chelonians such as early sea turtles might have fallen prey to giant seafaring Mesozoic reptiles, a situation which would make larger size a distinct advantage, Jaffe said. Larger size also plays a key role in maintaining body temperature and allowing for migration across considerable distances.

In the case of the giant tortoises, a larger body size gives them the ability to survive long periods without food, which may be necessary due to prolonged droughts that can occur in island habitats. Large body size also may allow giant tortoises to "raft" across vast expanses of ocean while going weeks without food, a feat documented through observations of giant tortoises with barnacle growth found on the mainland, Alfaro said.

"What is exceptional about chelonians is that they are one of the most distinctive groups of vertebrates, arose early in the history of terrestrial vertebrates, and persisted for a long time," Alfaro said. "Chelonians are good examples of evolutionary survivors."

The main goals of Alfaro's research group include studying the evolution of vertebrates and their subsequent diversity in shape, size and structure. This involves developing methods to identify time periods and locations on the tree of vertebrate life in which unusual amounts of species diversification have occurred, Alfaro said.

An 'incredible opportunity'

Jaffe, a senior at Harvard-Westlake School, started volunteering in Alfaro's laboratory when he was 16, after e-mailing Alfaro about his interest in conducting research. Jaffe spent almost 30 hours a week in the lab for two full summers and was able to turn his results into a first-authored paper -- a feat rarely accomplished by high school students.

"Being part of this research group has been an incredible opportunity for me," Jaffe said. "I can't say how grateful I am. Not only did I learn the tools of the trade, especially in the lab, but also what it is like to start off with an abstract question and address it through data collection and interpretation."
Jaffe hopes to study biological sciences and pursue further research in college.

"Alexander was ready to take intellectual ownership of a project," Alfaro said. "In addition to being a very conscientious young scientist, Alexander really showed an interest in the questions that we are asking and in getting the data to answer those questions."

This research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation.
For more on Alfaro's research, visit his website at http://pandorasboxfish.squarespace.com.

Lack of Paperwork Lands Tortoise Seller 24 week Suspended Sentence

October 26, 2010
TRAFFIC in Enforcement, Herpetological
Cambridge, UK, 26th October 2010-Robert Struthers, a UK-based tortoise seller, has received a 24 week suspended jail sentence after illegally selling 11 threatened tortoises without the relevant government permits.
Struthers was also told to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work and fined GBP1,200 (USD 1,900) after he confessed at Carlisle crown court to five charges of selling tortoises without appropriate certificates and one charge of fraud.

Struthers admitted supplying a bogus certificate to a customer who had threatened to report the lack of proper paperwork to the authorities following her purchase of  two tortoises.

Later, it emerged the certificate had been issued for a separate concern in Essex. In the UK, exemption certificates from the Animal Welfare Agency are necessary before certain tortoise tortoises can be sold legally. They include the two species sold in this case-Spur-thighed Tortoise Testudo graeca and Marginated Tortoise T. marginata. Judge Peter Hughes QC, who presided over the case, noted that although the tortoises were captive-bred and properly cared for, the failure to comply with certification processes could encourage illegal trade because the authorities would be unable to determine the origins of specimens. He noted that while the offences were serious, had the tortoises been wild-taken, the defendant would have received a substantial term of imprisonment.



From: HerpDigest Volume # 10 Issue # 46 10/30/10 (A Not-for-Profit Publication)

Lack of Paperwork Lands Tortoise Seller 24 week Suspended Sentence

October 26, 2010
TRAFFIC in Enforcement, Herpetological
Cambridge, UK, 26th October 2010-Robert Struthers, a UK-based tortoise seller, has received a 24 week suspended jail sentence after illegally selling 11 threatened tortoises without the relevant government permits.
Struthers was also told to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work and fined GBP1,200 (USD 1,900) after he confessed at Carlisle crown court to five charges of selling tortoises without appropriate certificates and one charge of fraud.

Struthers admitted supplying a bogus certificate to a customer who had threatened to report the lack of proper paperwork to the authorities following her purchase of  two tortoises.

Later, it emerged the certificate had been issued for a separate concern in Essex. In the UK, exemption certificates from the Animal Welfare Agency are necessary before certain tortoise tortoises can be sold legally. They include the two species sold in this case-Spur-thighed Tortoise Testudo graeca and Marginated Tortoise T. marginata. Judge Peter Hughes QC, who presided over the case, noted that although the tortoises were captive-bred and properly cared for, the failure to comply with certification processes could encourage illegal trade because the authorities would be unable to determine the origins of specimens. He noted that while the offences were serious, had the tortoises been wild-taken, the defendant would have received a substantial term of imprisonment.



From: HerpDigest Volume # 10 Issue # 46 10/30/10 (A Not-for-Profit Publication)