Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins: A Natural History - Hardcover

Ronald Orenstein is a zoologist, lawyer and wildlife conservationist who has written extensively on a wide range of natural history issues.

PREFACE: Why Turtles Matter

"Turtles," Anders Rhodin of the Chelonian Research Foundation wrote over ten years ago, "are in terrible trouble." I began the preface to the first edition of this book with his words. For the second edition I can do no better than quote him again, this time from a statement he made in 2011: "Turtles are in serious trouble. They are some of the world's most endangered vertebrates, more than mammals, birds, or even highly endangered amphibians."

Few herpetologists--the scientists who study reptiles and amphibians--would disagree with him. His 2011 statement was made upon the release of a multi-authored report, Turtles in Trouble: The World's 25+ Most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles--2011, detailing just how bad things are. Half of the turtle species in the world are threatened with extinction. There is hardly a place left on earth, land or sea where turtles are safe. In some places, most particularly in southern Asia where forests and rivers are being swept clean of turtles to supply growing and voracious markets for food and pets, their situation is little short of desperate. Some species have probably already disappeared; more will almost certainly do so, or be reduced to an existence in captive colonies, despite efforts we make to save them. Pollution, habitat destruction, overhunting, climate change and disease strike at species after species. During the last five years of the 20th century, populations of the largest turtle in the world, the Leatherback Sea Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), collapsed throughout the Pacific Ocean. Poachers are stealing the beautiful Radiated Tortoise (Astrochelys radiata), even from national parks. The unique Central American River Turtle (Dermatemys mawii), the only living representative of its family, is being eaten out of existence.

There is more to turtles than most of us know. We think of them as the quintessence of slowness. When Camille Saint-Sa'ns assigned music to the tortoise in Carnival of the Animals, it was Jacques Offenbach's famous cancan--played at a glacial pace. But anyone who lets a careless hand get too close to an angry snapper or softshell will learn just how rapidly a turtle can move. The Big-headed Turtle (Platysternon megacephalum) of Southeast Asia can scale a slippery boulder or even climb into a tree. The Pig-nose Turtle (Carettochelys insculpta) of Australasia can dart away at four times the speed of a swimming human, and a sea turtle can fly through the water with balletic grace.

Imagine if turtles had vanished long ago, with the dinosaurs, and we knew them only from fossils. Surely we would be amazed that such bizarre creatures, sealed in bone, ribs welded to their shells, had existed; had ranged successfully almost throughout the world, in deserts, rivers, and forests, and far out into the open sea; had dug burrows that became homes for other creatures; had a role to play in the habitats where they lived. We would regret that we had missed the opportunity to see them plodding their way through ancient forests, beneath the feet of monsters.

But turtles, unlike so many other reptiles of past ages, did survive, and for many of us they are a commonplace. Some of us think of them with amusement, as comic-strip characters, plush toys for children, or dancing, top-hatted figures on a box of candy. For others, turtles are a source of food and income, whether from selling a tortoise as a pet or showing tourists a sea turtle laboriously digging its nest in the sand. For some, turtles are even an object of veneration, to be protected and fed on the grounds of a temple. Humankind sees turtles as anything but what they really are: highly evolved, remarkable creatures, necessary components of their shrinking and ever more degraded ecosystems. We in the West have ceased to be amazed by them.

I have written this book because turtles do amaze me. I am not a herpetologist but an ornithologist, a student of birds, and turtles were always on the periphery of my attention. I could not help, though, collecting bits and pieces of information about them, and the more I learned the more astonished I became at the sheer range of adaptation in such superficially humble creatures.

As I have gone on from ornithology to a career in wildlife conservation, lobbying against the excesses of the international wildlife trade, turtles have come more and more into the center of my vision. In recent years, I have supported the ban on international trade in tortoiseshell, the beautiful scutes of the Hawksbill Sea Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), and joined efforts to regulate the almost uncontrolled turtle markets of eastern Asia. I have tried to become not just an admirer of turtles but one of their advocates.

If you are not one already, I hope that this book will make you, too, their admirer and advocate. Turtles should fill you with a sense of wonder, and our treatment of them should fill you with a sense of concern. I know it is entirely unscientific to ascribe human qualities to the processes of evolution, but it is hard not to admire turtles for their sheer doggedness in having successfully made it this far; that they are here for us to wonder at means that we should wonder at them, and make sure that our children and grandchildren have the chance to do the same.

In 1953, the authors of Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to Familiar American Species wrote that turtles (and lizards, and snakes) "are interesting and unusual, although of minor importance. If they should all disappear, it would not make much difference one way or the other." Although we know better today, it is our generation that is presiding over their disappearance.

It is up to us to rescue turtles from the terrible trouble in which we have placed them. Turtles matter because of what they are; because of the path they have taken; because of their role in the natural world; because of their impact, over the centuries, on our society, culture and even our religions. They matter because it would be shameful if their long tread through 200 million years of evolutionary history should end through our negligence, our greed and our failure to act.