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
Tweet
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
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.
Contribute in four ways
- Creatives: Promote your creative business and use your creative expertise to raise awareness and join the fight to save endangered species. Join us!
- Conservationists: Showcase your conservation work and activism, blog about the urgent issues that are vital right now. Find out more!
- Animal lovers: Big supermarket brands are directly contributing to this species’ extinction by destroying forests. You can join the #Boycott4Wildlife by sharing information from this website and boycotting brands in the supermarket.
- Activists in the UK, sign this petition: Prohibit the sale and use in the UK of palm oil and its derivatives in foods. Sign now!