Box turtles knocked out by excessive trade© Chris R Shepherd / TRAFFIC Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 23 February 2009—Unregulated trade—at 10 to 100 times legal levels—has caused Southeast Asian Box Turtles almost to vanish from parts of Indonesia, where once they were common, according to a new report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
The turtles are used for meat and in Traditional Chinese Medicine, with major markets in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Malaysia, mostly supplied from Indonesia. Animals are also exported as pets, mainly to the US, Europe and Japan.
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