Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times, December 27, 2008
{snip}
Fresh off a plane at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the hubs of the sprawling international turtle trade, the critters will help feed a huge and growing appetite for freshwater turtles as food and medicine.
The demand pits ancient culture against modern conservation and increasingly threatens turtle populations worldwide. As Asian economies boomed, more and more people began buying turtle, once a delicacy beyond their budgets. Driven in particular by Chinese demand, Asian consumption has all but wiped out wild turtle populations not just in China, but in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere in the region. Now conservationists fear that the U.S. turtle population could be eaten into extinction.
{snip}
Federal law prohibits the capture of endangered or protected species. But it does not cover common turtles such as Florida’s softshells, whose widely varying population estimates range from 4 million to 20 million. Softshells also abound in other, mostly Southern, states, some of which, including Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi, have banned or severely limited commercial harvests. Until recently, Florida had no limits on softshell harvests.
In Chinese communities around the world, turtles are coveted for their meat, which is thought to enhance longevity and sexual prowess. They’re also used to make tonics believed to boost the immune system, and for other traditional medicines intended to treat an array of ailments, including cancer, arthritis and heart disease.
Carl Chu, the author of “Finding Chinese Food in Los Angeles,” recalls growing up in his native Taiwan and watching as turtles’ heads were cut off and their blood mixed with alcohol, then drunk as an aphrodisiac. It’s one small illustration of an age-old Chinese belief that all kinds of food are therapeutic, he says.
{snip}
Helen Nguyen, who has owned Nam Hoa Fish Market for 26 years, says that many of the turtles she sells for $6.99 a pound, before butchering, end up as soup in Chinese restaurants in Alhambra and Monterey Park, communities with large Asian populations.
The big, brownish-green softshells are most desirable because a 12-pounder will yield about half its weight in meat, she says. Its leathery shell also can be steamed and eaten.
“Most often, older people eat it,” Nguyen says. “For the body. For the health. Makes you healthy.”
In 1999, an international consortium of biologists and others estimated that the Asian turtle trade had grown to about 10 million of the reptiles a year, or 30,000 a day. By many accounts, demand has since grown dramatically.
During the peak season in late summer and early fall, the creatures are pulled by the thousands from Florida lakes, rivers, ponds, canals, drainage ditches and abandoned phosphate pits.
Those who catch them typically use baited hooks on trotlines, some stretching for miles. Their catch is bagged, boxed and shipped live to U.S. customers on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico—and to Asian gateways such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.
One Florida seafood dealer said his company had processed up to 20,000 pounds a week—a couple of thousand adult turtles. Another broker ships nearly that much, according to a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report this year.
Many of the shipments go through LAX.
“In rough numbers, it’s probably about 800 turtles a week, and they’re going to southern China and Hong Kong,” says Joe Ventura, an inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Los Angeles. “It used to be a luxury item there. Now it’s just a routine thing that people eat.”
Although U.S. turtle farms have multiplied and now raise huge numbers of softshell turtles, almost all are hatchlings, according to Aresco and Kevin Enge, a Florida state biologist. Hordes are sold to Chinese turtle farms as breeding stock, they say.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Kim Christensen
at kim.christensen@latimes.com .
(Posted on December 31, 2008)
Comments
This is why the Chicken Littles in the environmental movement have no credibility. 20,000,000 turtles are an endangered species?
Likewise these wackos are screaming about “threatened” Polar Bears even though that population has doubled in the last 30 years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time one of my Puerto Rican neighbors here in NYC tries to stomp on a cockroach he’s warned that they’re on the Endangered Species List.
The Chinese seem to believe that any creature that is endangered is also an aphrodisiac. If we could convince them that Chinese men are endangered, suddenly it will come to light that their gall bladders are an aphrodisiac.
jewamongyou is right. The Chinese think that rhino horn and bear gall bladders are aphrodisiacs. While Asians are often smart and hard working, they seem on the whole to have very little appreciation for protecting the environment and endangered species.
Of course there are white people like that too, apparently including Madison Grant. There is more than one species of turtle, and many of them have vastly less than 20,000,000 individuals remaining. The truth is that we are in the midst of a mass extinction, and the quadrupling of the human population in the past century is the primary reason for this. But now that nearly all the population growth is due to non-whites, the politically correct environmentalists have stopped worrying and learned to love overpopulation.
“This is why the Chicken Littles in the environmental movement have no credibility. 20,000,000 turtles are an endangered species?”
Madison Grant
One billion people can go through twenty million turtles very quickly.
I can see how the 20 million turtles could be considered an endangered species. I would think that billions of Asians with a hunger to feast on turtle could make short work of 20 million turtles. “Asian consumption has all but wiped out wild turtle populations not just in China, but in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere in the region.” I’m starting to believe that no creature, small or large, is safe from the Asian appetite. After all, a number of Asian countries have already reduced their wildlife population down to the level of just rodents. From a show I watched it appears many Asians are now rapaciously feasting on rodents.
Why is it that Chinese men need so many aphrodisiacs anyway ? Maybe all the pollution there affects them ? Just no interest ?
File under diversity and its discontents. Here is a link to more info about unique Asiatic culinary habits:
http://www.aapn.org/fooddogsna.html
Just let nature run it’s course.
These watermelons(Red Communists on the outside, Green Environmentalists on the inside) will try to use anything to stir things up. I don’t think they even know why they do it anymore. There are bigger fish(endangered or not) to fry!
If there is demand for these creatures, that will ensure their continued existence. Farm them and sell them to the Chinese. Why let the makers of viagra collect all the cash?
This is not a silly season story, but one wonders whether we’ll hear the next installment.
‘Flamethrower’ is right; freshwater turtles can be bred in captivity, just like crocodiles and all the big cats. So long as they are plentiful in the wild and penalties for poaching and / or over-harvesting them are trifling, it makes more sense to gather them in the wild than to breed them.
Florida, like Hawaii, is a textbook example of a place in which alien species introduced deliberately or accidentally have prospered greatly. There are probably a dozen alien species of freshwater turtles at large in Florida, keeping the breeding populations of the Burmese python company.
One news report a few years ago claimed that newly-arrived East Asians - probably Sino-Vietnamese or Hmong - on the Pacific Coast were poaching brown bears and removing the gall bladders for profitable resale. Ditto the over-harvesting of wild ginseng in - if memory serves - Tennessee.
Can any readers supply an update on either of those stories?
As Flamethrower notes, these creatures won’t go extinct as long as there are turtle farms breeding them for sale to the Chinese, something that BTW would help our economy.
In the same way fish farms help deal w/the problem of overfishing.
The turtle tank at Nam Hoa Fish Market is empty, but not to worry: The manager of this bustling Chinatown store says he has plenty in back.
“Big ones,” he says, spreading his hands as wide as a Christmas turkey.
He nods to a worker, who slides a large, waxed-cardboard box from a stack behind the counter and strips off the lid. Inside is a squirming burlap bag, from which he dumps two 15-pound softshell turtles that hit the concrete with a clop, then flail helplessly on their backs. (from original article)
I submitted this story. When I first read it, I never considered the “Chicken Littles in the environmental movement” or the “These watermelons (Red Communists on the outside, Green Environmentalists on the inside)” angle. By the way, shouldn’t that be red on the inside and green on the outside? Maybe commie watermelons are different. I was appalled by the opening which I posted above. Even though I’m not naive, it always disheartens me to read how some humans are capable of treating animals so cruelly, as if they lacked any sensitivity towards physical pain. It’s something that I wish all people would consider, that’s all. If that makes me a commie, an environmentalist, or even a watermelon, I would wear the mantle with pride.
Here in Alabama we have thousands upon thousands of acres of aqua-culture ponds that are used to raise catfish, talapia, crawfish, and even shrimp. Soft shell turtles could easily be commercially grown here too. If the Chinese are willing to pay good prices for them, then why not meet the demand!
Sounds like a potentially profitable business opportunity to me!
Alas, the endangered Tiger and Asian bear are used as an aphrodisiac as well. The white/European race is stable in population. It is the other races that are proliferating—particularly the darker skinned. When will our environmental flakes realize that overpopulation is the force behind most environmental degradation and animal extinction? What is driving overpopulation in the developed world—immigration!
Some of you may be aware of the asian snake head fish invasion of the Potomac River. The snake head fish is an uber invasive species from asia that has the great potential to wreck the ecology of the Potamic River. Does anyone have any idea how the snake head fish ever got into the Potomac River? Let me tell you:a LEGAL IMMIGRANT from China living in Virginia had a very sick LEGAL IMMIGRANT sister who miracously recovered from a life threatening medical condition. It is an ancient Chinese tradition that when a recovery like this happens, it is because of the intervention of an ancient ancestor. To thank the long departed ancient ancestor, a snakehead fish must be released into a river. Now this is quite all right if the river is somewhere in asia where the snake head fish is in species equillibrium with the other native species in an asian river. Toss an asian snake head fish into the American river system and there is a great risk of a massive species extinction in an American river such as the Potomac. These are one of the many blessings of post 1965-immigration generated diversity Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s hard to beleive that Native Born White Americans should be so fortunate as to be the major beneficiares these blessings-seriously. Vdare.com should have something on its website about how the snake head fish was introduced into the Potamac river. Ah….HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
I submitted this story. When I first read it, I never considered the “Chicken Littles in the environmental movement” or the “These watermelons (Red Communists on the outside, Green Environmentalists on the inside)” angle. By the way, shouldn’t that be red on the inside and green on the outside? Maybe commie watermelons are different. I was appalled by the opening which I posted above. Even though I’m not naive, it always disheartens me to read how some humans are capable of treating animals so cruelly, as if they lacked any sensitivity towards physical pain. It’s something that I wish all people would consider, that’s all. If that makes me a commie, an environmentalist, or even a watermelon, I would wear the mantle with pride.
Posted by Bill Mulder at 11:18 PM on January 1
I for one agree with you. I think this fits in perfectly with AMREN ideas-that is that different groups of people are well different. They hold different sets of morality and I basically do not have a distaste for Asians they often hold belief systems at odds with Europeans-mistreatment of animals and widespread tolerance for cheating would be another.
I know a lot of macho types will read an article like this or one about dog eating and say “well I eat cows so I don’t care”. The differences are several. First the majority of cultures eat herbivores not our fellow meat eaters (chickens,pigs, cows,etc.). Second, cats and dogs have been domesticated over thousands of years-to suddenly turn on them and eat them is inhumane. Lastly and worst of all many Asians (not all, Buddhists have a reverence for all sentient beings) believe animals taste best after they have been tortured. If you do a Google search regarding this you will find some quite horrific pictures and videos. Dogs being gutted alive. BBC video of an Asian women nonchalantly boiling a cat alive then skinning it while its wincing in agony.
A Chinese friend once told me that once all these endangered “aphrodesiac” animals are extinct, Chinese men will become impotent.
Softshell turtles could easily be harvested in captivity like chickens, catfish, shrimp, etc. If some escape, who cares? If there’s a big enough market for the meat, someone will step in and start factory farming it.
The dinner-winner among invasive introduced species in Florida is, by the way, a fun little native of Brazil, the piranha. They’ve been caught in Florida waterways, which didn’t exactly thrill the Florida tourism folks. Southern Florida has wintertime temperatures approximately like those of Brazil, so there’s no reason why a breeding population of piranha isn’t viable there. I suppose it could be worse. Candiru would be worse.
Turtles, dogs, snakes — the Chinese will eat anything! Well, that’s what inevitably comes when you have a billion hungry mouths to feed.
Let our own rabid apostles of unlimited growth put that in their pipe and smoke it. If they get their way, someday we’ll all be eating snakes, cats, and rats too. And damn glad when we can get even that.
To Bill Mulder:
While I have some sympathy for the turtles being killed, I just don’t see much of a difference between that and dropping a live lobster into a boiling pot or what goes on in slaughterhouses here in America.
I guess the only people who can criticise the Chinese w/out hypocricy would be the extreme vegans who don’t wear clothes made from animals.
The animal rights issue is a very serious ethical/philosophical issue that should not be dismissed out of hand for utterly trivial moral concerns(the lack of them). However, there is also the very serious species/ecological conservation issue -the two can not be seperated. This is obviously an ethical issue. But is also a quality of life issue for millions of Native Born White Americans. Wipe out a massive number of species-this is the threat of the chinese snake head fish- and ecosytems will collapse. But before they collapse, the natural world within the borders of America will become an unspeakably boring landscape-and you will most definitely notice this…millions of you WHITE FOLKS will.
Beginning in 1973, Native Born White Ameriacns reduced their fertility to replacement level, and for doing the the right thing for the environment, Native Born White Americans have been punished by mainstream environmental organizations and insane leftist eco-radicals such as Earth First all of whom support an immigration policy that will bring about the complete racial and economic dispossession of the majority Native Born White Ameiacn population. This is their intent. And with this massive influx of post-1965 non-whites comes the lethal ecosystem/species destoying chinese snake head fish.
Without a doubt,post-1965 non-white LEGAL IMMIGRANTS are a very serious threat to America’s wildlife and ecosystems. Native Born White Americans never should have lowered their fertility level down to replacement level. Do the right thing for the environment and then get punished….. and there is no longer any incentive to do the right thing for the enviroment. Go out and live it up White Folks!!!! I’m not intetrested in saving the environment for future Pakistani “Americans”.
You will never get this kind of analysis on vdare.com and numbersusa.com.
I have a nice detention pond behind my house here in Florida. There were two turtles back there… I haven’t seen them lately..and I don’t think my baby alligators got them..
Ok, I’ll be serious… I think it is all about money for some people…that is why they are catching them….. Everyone wants to get in on the act… It is like the Tasmanian Lion… they drove it to extinction by over hunting, greedy for the bounty on the animal.
