Dr. Behler, who is also a curator at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said even endangered species whose trade was forbidden by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a treaty administered by the United Nations, were showing up in China's markets headed for the soup pot and the frying pan. It's an immense problem. The severity of the problem has become starkly clear to biologists trying to study the turtles of this poorly known region. The situation is little better in Laos. In a month's time, you might find less than a half-dozen turtles in the field.
Researchers say they hear similar stories coming out of Cambodia and Thailand.
Studies of actual export numbers corroborate the anecdotal evidence for large-scale exportation of these turtles. According to reports from Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring program, more than 240 tons of turtles, representing more than 200,000 individual turtles, were leaving Vietnam each year for sale in China in 1994. By 1996, two to four tons of turtles were being exported each day from Phnom Penh in Cambodia. As a result, the easiest place to find these turtles today is in China's markets. In July 1997, Dr. William McCord, a veterinarian from Hopewell Junction, N.Y., who does research on turtles, made a videotape recording an estimated 10,000 turtles for sale during a visit to a wildlife market in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.