Conservationist Finds Hope for World’s Rarest Turtle in Vietnam

Domestic and foreign conservationists are finding hope for the conservation of the rarest turtle in the world that was captured last October in Dong Mo Lake in Hanoi, said experts of the Hanoi Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Asian Turtle Program (ATP) of Indo-Myanmar Conservation (IMC), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). At a Hanoi workshop last week, scientists informed that the turtle is considered definitively a Swinhoe’s Softshell Turtle. They also revealed the genetic testing about the gender of the turtle. Accordingly, the turtle in Dong Mo Lake is female. Authorities believed that there are at least one more of these turtles in Dong Mo Lake and yet another in nearby Xuan Khanh Lake. They hoped to capture and determine the gender of the turtle in both Dong Mo and Xuan Khanh Lakes this coming spring to give a chance to breed to ensure this species can return from the brink of extinction. Experts said that it was the best news of this year, raising hope for the global turtle conservations, notably for a rare, precious, and endangered species listed in Vietnam’s Red Data Book and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as Swinhoe’s Softshell Turtle. They also pledged the government to create favorable conditions to support experts and conservationists in the issue. The last known female Swinhoe’s Softshell Turtle died on April 13, 2019, during recovery from anesthesia after an artificial insemination procedure in Suzhou, China. (Nhan Dan, en.Nhan Dan)