Rediscovered specimen of the Yunnan Box Turtle. According to Wikimedia Commons this image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Old museum specimen of the Yunnan Box Turtle. Courtesy of the World Chelonian Trust. © All rights reserved.
According to Rogner
(1996) the carapace of the Yunnan Box Turtle is extremely flat and
reaches up to 12.6cm in males and 14cm in females. It is light to dark
brown in colour and has three longitudinal ridges. The dark-brown
plastron maintains a complete internal suture and its posterior edge is
strongly serrated. On the animals’ dark brown head, a fine yellow line
runs from the nostrils to above the eye and ends as a lighter neck stripe.
Throat and neck are covered in yellow or orange marks. (CITES, 1999)
This freshwater turtle was described from an altitude of 2,000m on the Yunnan Plateau in China, and area with high elevation wetland. This habitat has been destroyed by the expanding city of Kunming (Zhao 1998). The second locality for the Yunnan Box Turtle given by Boulenger (1906), ‘Tongchuan-Fu’, lies ca. 100 km north of Kunming. Lau & Shi (2000) reported that a suitable habitat for the Yunnan Box Turtle may still exist there, but no specimens have been found. (Parham et al., 2004) Iverson et al. (1998) reported also Tunghuan Fu (= Tongchuan-Fu) and Yunnan-Fu (= Kunming) in Yunnan Province as localities where this species has been found. (CITES, 1999)
Box turtles are omnivores, meaning they will eat a variety of animal and plant based foods. It is likely that the Yunnan Box Turtle is an omnivore too.
The Yunnan Box Turtle is known from 12 specimens collected from Yunnan, China, before 1908. These were either purchased from natural history specimen dealers who obtained them from Yunnan, southern China, before 1908, or have no associated data. (Parham et al., 2004) According to the National Environmental Protection Agency of China (1998) the last wild specimen was sighted in 1906, despite intensive specific searches and the massive general market trade (recent market records almost certainly derive from misidentification). (Asian Turtle Trade Working Group, 2000) However, in 1946, a supposed further live animal was reported (Zhou and Zhao, 2004, EAZA, 2005). No confirmed sightings have been reported since 1906 and this species became regarded as extinct (Asian Turtle Trade Working Group, 2000). In 2004, Chinese scientists announced they had rediscovered the Yunnan Box Turtle (Zhou and Zhao, 2004).
Reports by Wenjun et al. (1996) claim that the Yunnan Box Turtle was still frequently on offer in Chinese food markets between 1990 and 1994 in the country’s southern Guangdong Province and Guangxi Autonomous Region, various market surveys in the area failed to find this species (Lau et al. 1995; Li & Li, 1997a; Fellowes & Hau 1997; McCord in litt. 1998). (CITES, 1999)
However, more than ten years later, turtle biologists in China believed that they had found at least one live specimen of the extinct Yunnan box turtle. A single female Yunnan box turtle was purchased late 2004 from a market in Kunming, Yunnan, China (Zhou and Zhao, 2004). In 2005, a single live male Yunnan Box Turtle had been discovered (Zhou, 2005) and in 2007 it was announced that another living female had been found (He et al. 2007). In 2007, Chinese scientists found that the three newly discovered individuals are very similar both in morphology and in mitochondrial DNA sequence to an old museum specimen of Cuora yunnanensis, suggesting that the three new individuals are the very Cuora yunnanensis, and thus confirming scientifically that the species is not extinct (He et al. 2007).
Intense scientific fieldwork is required to locate and subsequently protect the surviving wild Yunnan Box Turtle populations as well as their natural habitats as soon as possible, before the remainder are collected for the market (EAZA, 2005; He et al. 2007).
Since 1988 the Yunnan Box Turtle has been classified as ”second grade of state major protected wildlife” in China. Therefore capture, transport and trade in wild animals requires official permits (Li & Li, 1997a). This law also applies to the transport of wild animals between national provinces (Wenjun et al., 1996). In 1991, the action plan of IUCN/SSC/Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group considered the Yunnan Box Turtle as a ”species of restricted distribution in need of status investigation”. As a consequence surveys and studies have been recommended to confirm taxonomic identity and continued existence of viable populations (IUCN/SSC/TFTSG, 1991). According to the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC, 1999) 37 nature reserves and three scenic areas have been established until 1993 in Yunnan Province, where the Yunnan Box Turtle was originally found. However, these measures do not act specifically for the protection of turtles. (CITES, 1999) The Red Data Book of China lists this species as ”probably extinct in the wild” (National Environmental Protection Agency of China 1998).
One specimen can be found in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris (France). Six specimens are in the type series at the British Museum of Natural History, two specimens in The Natural Museum of Vienna (Austria), three uncatalogued specimens in The Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China). Two of these are whole preserved specimens, and one consists only of a skull and plastron after being dissected for an anatomy course. (Parham et al., 2004)
The Paris specimen was
collected from Yunnan-Fu, the terra typica of Cuora yunnanensis. It
was received by the Paris Museum in 1907 from W. F. H. Rosenberg, a
collector and dealer of natural history collections. Many of Rosenberg’s
other specimens from China were recorded as being from
"Yunnan-fu" and "Tongchuan-Fu", the same two
localities given by Boulenger (1906) in the original description of Cuora
yunnanensis. It is possible that Rosenberg also obtained his Yunnan
specimens from John Graham and Rev. F. J. Dymond, the collectors that
supplied Boulenger with the type series of the species. (Parham
et al., 2004)
Yunnan Box Turtle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Boulenger, G. A. (1906) Descriptions of new reptiles from Yunnan. A. Mag. Nat. Hist. 7, 567–568.
CITES. (1999). Proposals for Amendment of Appendices I and II. Cuora yunnanensis. [Available online, PDF (236 KB)]
EAZA. (2005). Shellshocking News (Official Newsletter of the EAZA Shellshock Turtle & Tortoise Campaign 2004/5). European Association of Zoos and Aquaria. Issue 1: January 2005, page 3.
Fellowes, J.R. & Hau, C.-M. (1997): A Faunal Survey of Nine Forest Reserves in Tropical South China, with a Review of Conservation Priorities in the Region. Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden, Hong Kong.
Fu, S. (1997): A profile of dams in China. In: The River Dragon has Gone, Dai Qing (ed.).
He J.,T. Zhou, Rao D.-Q. & Y.-P. Zhang (2007). Molecular identification and phylogenetic position of Cuora yunnanensis. Chinese Science Bulletin 52(23): 3305-3309.
IUCN/SSC/TFTSG (1991): Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles – An Action Plan for their Conservation. IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, second edition – 1991.
Iverson, J.B., Kiester, A.R., Kimerling, A.J., Sahr, K. & Hughes, J. (1998): Turtles of the world: Distribution of Asiatic turtles and 50 tortoises (Internet-Homepage http://bufo.geo.orst.edu/turtle, July 1998).
Lau, M. W., Ades, G., Goodyer, N., Zou F. (1995): Wildlife Trade in Southern China Including Hong Kong and Macao. Kadoori Farm & Botanic Garden Cooperation.
Lau, M. & Shi, H. (2000) Conservation and trade of terrestrial and freshwater turtles and tortoises in the People’s Republic of China. In Asian turtle trade: Proc. Workshop Conserv. and Trade of Freshwat. Turtles and Tortoises in Asia. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 1–4 December 1999. Chel. Res. Monogr. 2 (ed. P. P. van Dijk, B. L. Stuart & A. G. J. Rhodin), pp. 30–38. Lunenburg: Chelonian Research Foundation.
Li, Y. & Li, L. (1997a): The investigation on wildlife trade across Guangxi borders between China and Vietnam, in: Conserving China´s Biodiversity, Reports of the Biodiversity Working Group, China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development (1992-1996), Beijing 1997, 118-127.
Maas, H. (1995): China - der hungrige Gigant. FOCUS, 45/1995, Germany.
McCord, B. (1998): Personal report on a survey Species presently impacted by the Chinese food markets. 2/98, in litt. to R. Wirth (June 1998).
National Environmental Protecion Agency (1998): China Red Data Book of Endangered Animals -Amphibia and Reptilia, Science Press, Beijing, Hong Kong, New York.
Parham, J.F., Stuart, B.L., Bour, R., Fritz, U. (2004). Evolutionary distinctiveness of the extinct Yunnan box turtle (Cuora yunnanensis) revealed by DNA from an old museum specimen. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Volume 271: S391 - S394. ISSN: 0962-8452 (Paper) 1471-2954 (Online). [Full text available online PDF(406 KB), Electronic Appendix PDF(209 KB)]
Rogner, M. (1996): Schildkröten. Vol. 1 & 2, heiro-Verlag, Hürtgenwald, Germany.
Studley, J. (1998): Progress, Biodiversity Loss & Environmental Degradation in SW China, Washington Post, dated 22th November 1998.
WCMC (1999): 1993 United Nation List of National Parks and Protected Areas, www.wcmc.ork.uk/cgi-bin.
Wenjun, L.; Fuller, T.K. & Sung, W. (1996): A survey of wildlife trade in Guangxi and Guangdong, China. TRAFFIC Bulletin, Vol.16, No.1, 9-16.
Zhao, E. (1998) China red data book of endangered animals: Amphibia and Reptilia. New York: Science Press.
Zhou T. (2005). Discovery of a living Male Yunnan box turtle, Cuora yunnanensis Boulenger, 1906. Sichuan J Zool (in Chinese), 24: 345-346.
Zhou, Ting, William P. McCord, Torsten Blanck and Xiao-feng Sun. (2008). Rediscovery and first breeding of the Yunnan Box Turtle. Reptilia (GB). (59): 29-34.
Zhou T. and Zhao E. (2004). On the occurrence of living Cuora yunnanensis since fifty-eight years, and its description. Sichuan Journal of Zoology 23(4):325-326, 1 plate.
Last
updated: 29th August 2009.
This page is a part of The Extinction Website. © 2000-2009.