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Sunday, March 11

GK: Understand threat to Turtles in India (ENVIRONMENT)


A small group of one of India’s most-threatened turtles, the northern river terrapin, is finding refuge in four breeding ponds in the Sundarbans in West Bengal, under an ambitious plan to repopulate the species in the wild.

The terrapin is one of five freshwater turtles among the world’s 50 most-threatened turtles. Their fragile state is documented in Turtles in Trouble, published for 2018 by the Turtle Conservation Coalition, a consortium of conservation organisations.

India’s “top five” at-risk include Batagur baska, the northern river terrapin found in the Sundarbans, and the red-crowned roof turtle, Batagur kachuga, from the National Chambal Sanctuary, spread across Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

Others are Chitra indica, the South Asian narrow-headed softshell turtle in the gangetic river system, Nilssonia nigricans, or black softshell turtle, encountered in temple ponds in north Bengal and Assam, and Pelochelys cantorii, the Asian giant softshell turtle in the eastern coast.

The northern river terrapin, the red-crowned roof turtle and giant softshell turtle are critically endangered, as per the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, while the black softshell is extinct in the wild, and the narrow-headed softshell, endangered.

What is IUCN?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a membership Union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organisations. It provides public, private and non-governmental organisations with the knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development and nature conservation to take place together.

Created in 1948, IUCN has evolved into the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network. IUCN experts are organised into six commissions dedicated to species survival, environmental law, protected areas, social and economic policy, ecosystem management, and education and communication.

What is Red List?

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ provides taxonomic, conservation status and distribution information on plants, fungi and animals that have been globally evaluated using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. This system is designed to determine the relative risk of extinction, and the main purpose of the IUCN Red List is to catalogue and highlight those plants and animals that are facing a higher risk of global extinction (i.e. those listed as Critically EndangeredEndangered and Vulnerable). The IUCN Red List also includes information on plants, fungi and animals that are categorized as Extinct or Extinct in the Wild; on taxa that cannot be evaluated because of insufficient information (i.e., are Data Deficient); and on plants, fungi and animals that are either close to meeting the threatened thresholds or that would be threatened were it not for an ongoing taxon-specific conservation programme (i.e., are Near Threatened).

Note: Readers are encouraged to Wikipedia terms highlighted in red; for convenience there is a wiki search tool on the left hand side 




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