World’s rarest turtle gets a shot at escaping extinction

In 2019, the world’s rarest turtle suffered a staggering loss. The last known female of the species, Swinhoe’s softshell turtle, died after an artificial insemination procedure at the Chinese zoo where she and her mate lived. This left the confirmed tally for the species at just two individuals: the male in China, plus one individual of unknown sex in a lake in Vietnam.

There may still be hope for the species. Conservationists and veterinarians recently announced that the Vietnamese turtle is a female. At the same time, exhaustive hunts for other surviving Swinhoe’s softshell turtles in Vietnam have verified at least two other promising leads. “This is very big news in Vietnam,” said Hoang Bich Thuy, the country director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Even people who don’t work in conservation, my friends and family, saw it on national TV and were like, ‘Oh! There’s new hope!’”

Swinhoe’s softshell turtles, which can weigh more than 370 pounds, be more than 6-feet long and live for over 100 years, hold a special cultural significance in Vietnam, where they are known as Hoan Kiem — “returned sword” — turtles. In the 15th century, a well-known folk tale goes, Vietnam’s king, Le Loi, used a magical sword to defeat the Ming dynasty army. When the battle was over, the king gave the sword to a turtle god in Hoan Kiem lake in central Hanoi.

In recent decades as Vietnam urbanised, one Hoan Kiem turtle continued to live in the lake, despite high levels of pollution. But in 2016, this last individual — a revered male known as Great-Grandfather Turtle — died, likely of natural causes. The sacred status of the Swinhoe’s softshell turtles living in Hoan Kiem lake did not extend to members of the same species living elsewhere in Vietnam, however. The species was heavily hunted for food and hammered by habitat destruction.

In 2003, Tim McCormack, director of the Asian Turtle Program, began surveying rivers where the species historically lived. He turned up a few shells in peoples’ homes, and most fishermen told him that the once-bountiful animal had disappeared. Searches in China, where the species is commonly known as the Yangtze giant softshell turtle, were also discouraging. McCormack and his colleagues finally caught a break in 2007 when a team member managed to get a photo of a Swinhoe’s softshell turtle discovered in Dong Mo lake, in an area west of Hanoi. They hired fishermen to keep an eye on the turtle and continued work on habitat improvement, community awareness and surveys to find additional Swinhoe’s softshell turtles. In 2014, they used genetic tools to confirm the turtle was a member of the species.

Five years after the discovery, the surveys delivered reports of another turtle in Xuan Khanh lake, just north of Dong Mo lake. In 2017, scientists from Washington State University used eDNA — a method that looks for a target species’ genetic material in environmental samples — to establish that the Xuan Khanh animal is most likely a Swinhoe’s softshell turtle. In receiving this news of a probable second animal in Vietnam, “it’s hard to describe my overwhelmed feelings,” said Nguyen Tai Thang, project manager for the Swinhoe’s softshell turtle at the Asian Turtle Program. Finding more animals in the wild will ensure not only conservation of the species, he said, but that “the legend lives on.”