The TSA, in collaboration with The Orianne Society (TOS), hired noted South Africa-based wildlife film makers Moz Images to cover the rapidly worsening crisis with Madagascar’s Radiated Tortoise.  The film crew of Chris Scarfe and Aaron Gekoski accompanied Rick Hudson and Christina Castellano to Madagascar in September 2011 and the resulting short film - Tortoises in Trouble - is being released this week to multiple outlets and can be seen below.  The film tracks a group of 140 confiscated Radiated Tortoises from the capital city of Antananarivo to their homeland in the south where they are repatriated to a sacred protected forest near the village of Ampotoka.  Along the way, the film exposes ample evidence of massive tortoise consumption, and explores the root causes through interviews with poachers, gendarmes and local judiciary.  The film clip is short – only nine minutes – and is meant to draw attention to the crisis internationally and to increase the pressure on the government to respond with stricter penalties and enforcement.  However we captured sufficient footage to compile a full length documentary on this story if funding can be identified.

From all over the Androy Region of southern Madagascar, they came:  politicians, local officials, teachers, and of course the children - over 1000 of them. All wanted to be there to participate in the dedication ceremony for the region’s newest primary school, recently constructed with support from the Turtle Survival Alliance. What began with a simple idea in March 2010 - “how can we reward the village of Antsakoamasy for doing such an incredible job of protecting their tortoise population?” - has produced a new school and transformed this sleepy little village on the outskirts of the Cap St Marie Special Reserve into a model for community involvement in tortoise conservation. 

In response to the growing number of tortoise confiscations in Madagascar, and a lack of trained tortoise-care personnel and dedicated facilities, the TSA recently conducted two husbandry training workshops aimed at improving care and survival. Often, these confiscations end poorly for the tortoises involved, and we continue to see appalling levels of mortality due to improper care and inadequate holding facilities. Radiated Tortoises are increasingly becoming refugees in their own country, and with populations crashing rapidly, there is an overwhelming need to ensure that as many of these creatures as possible survive.

Rick Hudson (TSA President) is currently traveling in Madagascar with TSA Members Christina Castellano (The Orianne Society) and Michael Ogle (Knoxville Zoo). Part of their mission is to deliver supplies to the brand new school in Antsakoamasy. (For more on the school and its construction, click here.) We were very pleasantly surprised by the excitement and generosity that this project has generated among our members and supporters. Special thanks to Bob Blome, who provided a variety of school supplies and a large world map for the school.

Additionally, the Knoxville Zoo ran a short, but very successful fundraising campaign to purchase furniture and supplies for the school. Far exceeding their original goal of $2,000, their campaign raised more than $3,100 that is being used to purchase equipment and supplies in Madagascar that will fully outfit the school for its grand opening. Special thanks to Bob Krause, Beverly Abele, Jim and Marie Vina, Valerie Doyle, Stephen Hall, Elizabeth Wasserman, Bob Blome, David Shapiro, Colette Adams and all of the other donors that made this campaign such a success. Your generosity will make a meaningful impact in the lives of the children of Antsakoamasy and for radiated tortoise conservation.

 

We were very excited this week to receive this picture from Herilala Randriamahazo, our Tortoise Conservation Coordinator in Madagascar. This is our first glimpse at the school that the TSA is building in the village of Antsakoamasy! In March 2011, Rick Hudson traveled to Madagascar and met up with Christina Castellano (The Orianne Soceity) and Herilala to develop a strategy to protect remaining populations of the rapidly disappearing radiated tortoise. You can read a full report about their trip here.

During their visit, they met with the leaders of Antsakoamasy, a village that had previously been identified as having a strong protective attitude toward the tortoises that remain in the area. Prior to their visit, Herilala had been working for many months to forge a relationship with the community of Antsakoamasy and while Rick and Christina were visiting, a formal agreement was made with the village: in exchange for continued protection of radiated tortoises, the TSA agreed to build the community a school. The agreement was commemorated with a traditional zebu festival in March and there is no doubt that the school's grand opening in March 2012 will be celebrated with equal vigor!

The TSA is confident that providing conservation incentives like these will encourage other villages in Madagascar to protect and value their tortoises. Hopefully, this collaboration will serve as a model for future conservation initiatives in other areas of the country.

89 turtles of 8 species arrived at Amsterdam airport on September 16, after having been rescued from a confiscation of an illegal shipment in Hong Kong. TSA Europe spearheaded efforts to place the turtles within their conservation network that includes European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA) Zoos and European Studbook Foundation (ESF) private collections throughout Europe. The shipment included 73 radiated tortoises, two spider tortoises, five Burmese star tortoises, one Indian star tortoise, five yellow-margined box turtles, one Japanese pond turtle, one Pancake tortoise and one yellow pond turtle.

All of the animals arrived in good health and some were transferred immediately to their final destinations at various locations within the ESF accompanied by a loan contract. The radiated tortoises were temporarily homed at the Rotterdam Zoo for quarantine, as CITES documents had to be issued before they could be moved to other facilities. Eventually, they were sent to following European zoos: the Plock, Wroclaw and Opole Zoos (Poland), Santa Inacio (Portugal), A Cupulatta (France), Antwerp Zoo (Belgium), Paignton Zoo (England) and Copenhagen Zoo and Terrariet Vissenbjerg (Denmark).

Assisting with this rescue operation allowed for a large number of turtles to be secured for captive breeding programs, boosting safety net populations for these rare species. Shipping costs for operations such as this place a severe burden on the budget of TSA Europe. To donate funds to offset some of these costs, please click here.

You may have read about the recent reintroduction of confiscated radiated tortoises into the Ampotaka sacred forest in September. These tortoises (157 total) had been confiscated from Ivato International Airport in July and the TSA was appointed by the authority to look after them. All of the tortoises were measured and weighed as part of their exam prior to release. After a full evaluation, ten juvenile tortoises did not meet the release criteria on September 19 and were instead kept in the village of Ampotaka to allow for a longer recovery period prior to their reintroduction.

Ampotoka is the site of a prior tortoise release in March 2011 and has a history of collaboration with the TSA. During their meetings with the TSA in March, local leaders communicated a commitment to tortoise protection in their sacred forest. However, they faced many challenges - primarily an inability to communicate with authorities to report poaching in the area. To do so, they had to walk for days to Beloha because phone communication was not avaiable. At that time, the TSA agreed to buy a cell phone for the village.

For the second time in 6 months, Rick Hudson (TSA) and Christina Castellano (The Orianne Society) teamed up to work in the south of Madagascar, continuing to look for solutions to the ongoing Radiated Tortoise crisis (see March 2011 trip report here). We came prepared this time with a highly capable field crew, the Mozambique-based Moz Images, consisting of cameraman Chris Scarffe and photo-journalist Aaron Gekoski.  Moz Images specializes in underwater photography but does land-based projects too, and they are highly adept at exposing various wildlife issues globally.  Their most recent project, Shiver, examines the shark-finning industry in Mozambique, click here to view a clip. The film that they were working on during this trip will be a short six-minute video, in three languages (French, English and Malagasy) that will be widely available for posting on various web and social media sites in order to expose the Radiated tortoise tragedy internationally. It will also be made available to TV stations in Madagascar and shown to many villages throughout southern Madagascar, particularly those impacted by, or participating in, tortoise poaching. 

196 Critically Endangered tortoises were seized at Ivato International Airport on the night of July 24. The group included 168 Radiated Tortoises (Astrochelys radiata), 27 Ploughshare Tortoises (Astrochelys yniphora) and one Spider Tortoise (Pyxis). According to the Eaux & Forêts staff at Ivato Airport, a car brought three suitcases directly to the plane, circumventing security screening. The person in charge of loading the luggage into the plane suggested that the bags be checked for safety purposes, at which time the tortoises were discovered.

Two passengers were arrested, one of whom is already well-known by customs personnel. The smugglers’ final intended destination was Indonesia, by way of Nairobi and Dubai. The Turtle Survival Alliance has been charged with the care of all of the Radiated Tortoises, while the Ploughshare Tortoises were sent to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. Herilala Randriamahazo (TSA Malagasy Tortoise Conservation Coordinator) is currently caring for the Radiated Tortoises, most of which are very young, in the gardens of the Madagascar Biodiversity Partnership in Antananarivo where he is based.

Many of the Radiated Tortoises are weak and in poor health after their ordeal. After they are able to fully recover, Herilala hopes to reintroduce them in the sacred forest of Ampotoka in the Androy Region, where a collaboration has already been established to release confiscated tortoises.  We will keep you posted on their progress. (Photo credit: Mamy Mael)

TSA and The Orianne Society are launching a partnership to develop strategies for saving this iconic symbol of Madagascar’s southern spiny forest.

We arrive in Madagascar around midnight on March 15 and by the time we get our bags and to the hotel it’s early morning on March 16. I am traveling with Christina Castellano, the newly appointed Director of Turtle Conservation Programs for The Orianne Society. She has a long-standing interest in Madagascar and intends to develop a comprehensive science-based program aimed at monitoring key populations of both radiated and spider tortoises. We are met at the airport by Herilala Randriamahazo, TSA’s Director of Tortoise Conservation in Madagascar. It has been exactly one year since I was last here and reported on the developing crisis with radiated tortoises in the south and the need for urgent conservation action. Together, Christina and I hope to determine how to best approach this problem, and to identify key populations that can still be protected. There is a sense of urgency to this mission because it appears that the situation may have finally reached the tipping point. After holding their own despite years of being harvested for food, the beautiful Radiated tortoise may be on its final legs. Our challenge is to determine a strategy that will at least preserve some healthy populations, and that solution will likely lie at the local community level. Southern Madagascar is a vast rural region where there is little capacity for enforcement of tortoise poaching activity. Enforcement is constrained by a poor communications network, and lack of transportation by officials, and lack of knowledge of the laws.