Bringing Freshwater Turtles out of their Shells and into the Spotlight

For believers of Vastu Shastra and Feng Shui, the kachua (turtles or tortoises) attracts good fortune. Decorative items, rings and pendants depicting these creatures are common talismans and some homes even keep them live as pets, for good luck.

Sneha Dharwadkar however, is sceptical. “This is wrong. Over 50 percent of freshwater turtle species are threatened. If they were indeed lucky, they wouldn’t be in this state!” says the herpetologist and conservation educator from Gujarat with experience in conservation, rescue and rehabilitation of freshwater turtles and tortoises.

Common myths like these as well as lack of sufficient academic research and data on freshwater turtles and tortoises of India, spurred Dharwadkar and another turtle researcher, Anuja Mital, to take action and bring their favourite creatures into the spotlight.

The two women founded the Freshwater Turtles and Tortoises of India (FTTI), a collective working to bring these species out of their metaphorical shells. “FTTI started out last year as an education and awareness project which has slowly gone onto becoming both, a field-based and education-based conservation project,” said Dharwadkar who noticed a severe lack of awareness around freshwater turtles and tortoises, even among her herpetologist counterparts.

“Both Anuja and me are turtle biologists and people used to often send us requests to identify turtles. We realised that even herpetologists who have been in the field of herpetofauna, studying reptiles and amphibians, were not aware of many freshwater turtle and tortoise species. Many found it difficult to identify even common turtles,” she told Mongabay-India.

Mital, a wildlife biologist and an independent turtle researcher from Mumbai, agreed, adding that she knows herpetologists working for decades who can’t identify turtles while she, after six years in the field, still gets referred to as “only a turtle biologist” despite her knowledge of a variety of herps. “I can tell you up to the genus level of any common herp!” she said.

Dharwadkar and Mital started their work around awareness in 2016 on the citizen conservation initiative, India Biodiversity Portal (IBP), where they managed a species page documenting freshwater turtles and tortoises of India. As they kept getting more requests for identification, they realised the severe lack of available information and knew they had to do something more about it.

In 2019, they extended their awareness work using social media and the response was overwhelming. “We had around 70 observations when we started, social media helped us cross 150 observations and after we did a social media campaign during Turtle Week in May last year, we crossed 250 observations within a few weeks of the campaign. We are now over 300 records and hope to increase that considerably after our upcoming Turtle Week initiative in May 2020,” Mital told Mongabay-India.

Their aim is to get more researchers and photographers who have photo records of turtles to contribute to this citizen-led project.

One of the benefits of the increasing number of observation reports on IBP and via social media was that they revealed new locations in India that were not previously known for populations of freshwater turtle and tortoise species.

“For the first time, we were getting observations of rare turtles like the Leith’s softshell turtle in locations that are new to us. We also got reports of the black softshell turtle – a rare turtle that is listed as ‘extinct in the wild’,” said Dharwadkar.

Among the unique observations the team received through their initiative, was one from Nashik, where rare Leith’s turtles were found within the city. “Before our initiative, we did not know that there was a population of the rare Leith’s softshell turtle right inside the city,” said Dharwadkar, who is working with a local organisation in Nashik, Eco-Echo, towards conservation of the Leith’s turtle from trafficking, consumption and other threats.

Why do we need to protect freshwater turtles?

India has a total of 29 species of freshwater turtles (24) and tortoises (5). The latest addition to the list was as recent as last year where a new record of the Impressed Tortoise (Manouria impressa), only known in China and Myanmar until then, was found in Arunachal Pradesh. Many of these 29 species are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act with up to 11 species having Schedule 1 protection, same as that of a tiger.

Freshwater turtles are known for their ecosystem services like keeping rivers, ponds and freshwater sources clean by eating algal blooms and scavenging on dead matter. “Freshwater turtles play an important role in being predators as well as the prey. They control invasive fishes by eating them, and at the same time, they are an important source of protein for a lot of animals that feed on turtle eggs and juvenile turtles,” explains Dharwadkar. “They are scavengers, also sometimes known as “vultures of the aquatic ecosystem” keeping the ecosystem clean and an important part of the aquatic food chain. A healthy pond ecosystem usually has a flapshell or some kind of freshwater turtle,” she said.

These charismatic creatures, however, are threatened by illegal trade, with hotspots in the north and northeast region of India. Right from international trafficking to people purchasing the species to keep as pets, illegally, it is the lack of information among consumers as well as officials that is driving the fate of these creatures. Additionally, age-old traditional practices of consuming the turtles and myths about turtle oil curing diseases are hard to combat.

“Turtle poaching is rampant across India and a lot of educated youth still like to have turtles as pets. When we put up pictures, our inbox is full of messages asking ‘where can I buy this?’, ‘do you breed them?’ etc. So we constantly share information that turtles are protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, it is illegal to keep them as pets…hopefully in a few years time the message will spread,” said Mital.

Researching the underresearched – Leith’s and black softshells

Dharwadkar and Mital, are independently involved in researching two lesser-known turtles in India – Leith’s softshell and black softshell turtle.

Leith’s softshell turtle (Nilssonia leithii) is a large freshwater turtle found mainly in large rivers and is endemic to peninsular India. This turtle can grow upto 80 cm in length. The hatchlings (newly hatched turtles) and the juveniles have eye-like spots on its carapace (the upper part of the shell), which is a characteristic of all turtles in the genus Nilssonia. Many individuals have red and black patterns on their heads, which could be absent on some individuals. Detailed information about its natural history and ecology in India is hard to come by, however.

Dharwadkar’s current research is mainly about finding out viable populations of the Leith’s softshell turtle in Maharashtra to conduct further long-term research. “We are also looking into the threats that these turtles are facing in the habitats where they are found. This project is in a nascent stage and we are looking for more funding to conduct intensive surveys to map all the places where these turtles are found and monitor their population, and conduct education programs,” she said.

Her work with FTTI helped further her research on Leith’s which she calls “a very cool-looking turtle that needed all the love (and research, because there are hardly any studies on it).”

Mital’s turtle of choice is even more rare and mysterious – the black softshell turtle is one of two species of freshwater turtles and tortoise around the world that is officially “Extinct in the Wild” as listed by IUCN.

“However, a wild population of the species was rediscovered in the Brahmaputra River at Kaziranga and Nameri National Parks of Assam. Subsequent surveys have reported them from a handful of locations across northeast India,” she said. “Many protected areas which might hold wild breeding populations of this rare species are still neglected and yet to be surveyed. The fact that no dedicated research had been initiated on this incredibly rare and revered turtle of Assam since it was rediscovered in 2007, got me excited to spearhead a project that would attempt to initiate baseline research in the mighty Brahmaputra river landscape,” said the researcher, who has previously studied the ecology of freshwater turtles in the Ganga river basin.

The Black Softshell Turtle (Nilssonia nigricans) in India is primarily found in a number of temple ponds across Assam, West Bengal, Tripura, Nagaland. However, here, captive populations live in despicable conditions surviving on poor diets of puffed rice, fruits and fast food as offerings by pilgrims and tourists, said Mital. There have been few records of individuals in the wild but further surveys are needed to identify populations in order to begin talking about conserving them.

“During my work, I’ve encountered forest staff and fishermen who have sighted the turtle and even have photo records. I’m working on building a network to consolidate these records and reach out to more people across my study areas,” she said.

Currently, the Black Softshell Conservation Project in Assam funded by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund and Desert Tortoise Council Diversity Grant, aims to survey four protected areas of Assam (Kaziranga, Orang, Manas and Nameri National Parks) along the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries for black softshell populations in order to update the conservation status of the species.

Women on the field

Dharwadkar was led to her research on the Leith’s softshell turtle after a difficult time as a woman on the field in Uttar Pradesh. “I wanted to work on turtles in south India after a year and half of very unsafe and challenging fieldwork in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. I have always loved softshell turtles and Leith’s softshell turtle seemed like an ideal candidate as it was endemic to peninsular India and also quite under-researched,” she said.

Researching turtles is particularly challenging for women as turtles are active in the day and night, notes Dharwadkar. “Field conditions are not conducive for women to work at night,” she said, recalling her experiences in north India.

Mital, who also worked on the field in Uttar Pradesh, narrates similar experiences where her turtle research usually came along with worries about going out on the field alone, tackling drunk boatmen, finding the right field assistant and more. In Assam though, where her current research is ongoing, it is different, she said. “I can’t still work at night but I don’t feel like I’m treated any differently as a woman. I can move around alone, I can travel anywhere…the northeast in general is much safer,” said Mital.

Despite their field experiences, perhaps common to many women wildlife scientists in India, the duo focus on the opportunities that being a woman researcher offers. Gaining trust from other women on the field has been fairly easier and locals are not outrightly hostile when they are out for awareness and education programs.

Collaborating with researchers has been another benefit, said Mital, adding with a laugh, “Women tend to collaborate more! I’ve always got good responses when I’ve reached out to women turtle researchers,” she said.

Another member of FTTI, Ayushi Jain, studying the Cantor’s softshell turtle in Kerala, echoes similar challenges as those faced by Dharwadkar and Mital about being a woman researcher on the field. She too has found a way to focus on the benefits, by building trust among local women and including diverse voices into her survey interviews.

“I get diversity in data because it is not that I am only talking to the fishermen or other male members of the community. I often go to homes near the river from 9 am to 3 pm. At that time, male members are not always there. Women collect in one place and talk to me. They are not wary of me,” she said.

Through her data collection, she has observed a gap in knowledge between two members of the same family – the man and the woman and this knowledge gap between genders is something she feels she has been able to pick up as a woman researcher, talking to other women and even staying in their houses.

Dharwadkar too has been including voices of women during her field surveys, noting that, “Even though a lot of men go out for fishing, it is the women who cook turtles, so sometimes they have interesting biological information to add.”

For Dharwadkar, Mital and Jain there is a long way to go before field research is conducive for women but they agree that through their workshops and awareness programs, where they interact with many children, perhaps the future generation, especially the girls, will get inspired. “Representation is important,” said Dharwadkar, with hope.

Going forward, Mital and Dharwadkar want to make their own projects more inclusive and create safe spaces where women researchers can at least come together and talk about these issues.

For the moment though, they are focussed on popularising freshwater turtles and tortoises and getting more researchers to study them. “Many stretches of rivers across India which are unprotected hold large populations of turtles which can serve as ideal study sites to study freshwater ecology, feeding and reproductive ecology or even community ecology in diverse hotspots of north and northeast India. We need more constructive research which will ultimately improve our understanding of the biology and requirements and ecosystem services freshwater turtles provide which can help to better conserve them,” said Mital.

Adds Dharwadkar, “Unless we carry out urgent interventions in terms of research and education, we may end up losing species. Funding agencies often focus on mammals to fund or birds or even marine turtles, but more than 50 per cent of freshwater turtles are threatened with extinction.”

“Yes, furries are cute, but the shellies deserve your love too!” she urges.

This story first appeared in Mongabay.