Southeast Asian Box Turtle Cuora amboinensis

Southeast Asian Box Turtle Cuora amboinensis

Endangered

Bangladesh; Brunei; India; Indonesia; Laos; Malaysia; Myanmar; Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; Vietnam

The Southeast Asian Box Turtle is largely restricted to standing water bodies, but opportunistically inhabits most types of water bodies except large rivers and reservoirs. They prefer lowland swampy areas with dense vegetation, but also occurs in intermittent streams in hill forest areas, mangrove creeks, rice paddies and irrigation canals, from tidal areas up to about 400 m altitude (Das 1991, van Dijk 1998, Schoppe and Das 2011).

In Malaysia the turtle was considered common in the 1990s, however, numbers have since reduced and they are considered Vulnerable (Schoppe 2008). Population density (including immature individuals) in an oil palm plantation in Sabak Bernam was 0.82 individuals/ha (Schoppe 2008).

IUCN

The Southeast Asian Box Turtle Cuora amboinensis is rare and dissappearing due to #palmoil deforestation in #India #Indonesia and SE Asia You can help with a supermarket #Boycott4Wildlife #naturetwitter #naturephotography

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Illegal trade for consumption and traditional Chinese medicine is the main threat facing Cuora amboinensis. Habitat impacts on the species are modest, as they are well capable of inhabiting human-dominated rice culture landscapes as long as the animals are not exploited (Schoppe and Das 2010).

Pollution of waterways from oil palm run offs was also identified as a key threatening factor by Lim and Das (1999) in Malaysia. 

IUCN Red list

Help with conservation of this creature

Turtle Conservation Fund

Further Information

Cota, M., Hoang, H., Horne, B.D., Kusrini, M.D., McCormack, T., Platt, K., Schoppe, S. & Shepherd, C. 2020. Cuora amboinensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T5958A3078812. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T5958A3078812.en. Downloaded on 04 February 2021.

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