Asian Turtles
...in this manner has made me an animal lover. Hence, I hate to hear what is happening to these turtles. The TSA is a coalition of diverse interest groups. They are in the process of establishing a network of assurance colonies. They would house and maintain the captured turtles and make them healthy and breed them to restock and put back into their natural habitat. There is a combined effort by many other groups who feel the same way as the TSA. A few of these groups are: government agencies, zoos, aquariums, research scientists, veterinarians and commercial turtle breeders. There is a extremely high demand for turtles. It is so high that it is a major threat on their survival. Two out of the twelve species found on the December 11th shipment were found to be near to extinction. Eleven of them were found to be endangered. These innocent turtles could possibly vanish like dinosaurs in the years to proceed. The demand must be stopped or our little hard shelled friends will be no more. There is no ethical stand point that could be made to justified for these poachers’ actions; it is devastatingly uncalled for. If they become extinct that leads right into another problem. The turtles are taken from their habitat where everything must depend on each other. If one element is missing in the equation there will be other consequences to follow. Take for instance sharks; if they were extinct that would kill the fish that feed off the algae on their belly. If the fish died, the bigger fish that feed off them would also die, etc. This chain could keep going and react many other chains and before you know it, half of the fish are dead. You can apply the same theory to turtles. The biggest and more personal issue at hand would be animal cruelty. Since, I love for the most part every animal out there I am very upset to know the truth about the turtles. Some of them are very small and cute and cannot put up any kind of fight. All they do is live in their pond trying to survive every day. Hunters then come around fishing out these turtles with hooks. These hooks are caught onto their mouths and sometimes down into their throat; for the most part they are never removed. They put them onto a boat or truck alive, to keep freshness, without food or water. Then, wait innocently until they have their heads chopped off. As they await for their execution, they are usually stacked high upon each other where the weight is so unbearable that their shells crack. The December 11th incident found the 10,000 turtles stacked in four, 20 foot con...