Authors: Gary WJ Ades (Head of Fauna Conservation Department of KFBG) and Andrew B Brown (Executive Director of KFBG)

Emy’s full scientific name is Manouria emys emys she is an Asian Brown Tortoise, and her kind, like many thousands of wild turtles and tortoises, have suffered many years of persecution and over-exploitation which is having serious consequences for wild populations. She may not be aware of the scientific and common name by which she is known, but she will surely remember the cruel circumstances under which she arrived in a foreign land, and the horror of being nestled among 10,000 other dead and dying turtles and tortoises. Luckily for her a Customs Officer chose to open the crate that had smuggled her and her companions into Hong Kong under a false manifesto. Among the carnage that surrounded her were 3 others of her kind, two were already dead and another was too sick to be saved. Crammed beside these familiar animals were many other shells of different shapes and sizes of species unknown to her. The world in which she found herself when the light streamed into the crate as it was opened for the first time in many days was a long way from the pristine mountain forest with sky high trees, gurgling rivers and bird song, which had been her home.

Things started to go wrong for Emy when she was rolled out of her hiding place by a trained hunting dog, which towered above her, barking incessantly at its discovery, out of excitement and its duty to inform its owner of the discovery. The sound of the excited canine echoed across the forest and brought the hunter who had travelled from a village further down the mountain running to see what had been found. Emy had thought she was in a safe place nestled amongst dead leaves between the giant finger-like buttress roots of a grand and ancient tree. But the working dogs commonly trained by the village hunters to search for wild animals particularly tortoises, turtles and pangolins, were adept at finding their quarry. The tracking dog is a great asset to the illegal hunter especially at a time when the forest has already been depleted of much of the diversity it once nurtured. Many wild animals are now at worryingly low densities because of exploitation for the bush meat and exotic pet trade. Unbeknown to Emy she would soon be starting a long journey which would end many hundreds of kilometers away from her capture spot and where she would join other unfortunate animals in one of a multitude of notorious wildlife markets in Southeast Asia.

The skills employed by the hunter in training the tracking dogs had been passed down through many generations of his ancestors, themselves skilled hunters and food providers for the village community. In times past the hunters would only take from the forest what they required to sustain their own families and share with other members of the village. An abundant life support existed in the forest and the hunters were in tune with the heart beat and soul of the forest. Unfortunately the same precious skills are no longer employed for the sake of sustaining the village health and culture. The value fetched by the illegal trade in distant countries has created an incentive for the local villagers to catch all they can find and sell to a trader, often not even a local person, who in turn provides the hunter with sums of money he never dreamt of. Greed will always find a willing taker, and sadly the trader had shifted the hunters’ mindset away from need to want. Wildlife, once consumed only in small quantities by the indigenous peoples is now transported to holding stations where traders direct the unfortunate animals along a well-oiled transport chain where corruption and covert techniques are employed to ensure the consignments reach their final destinations. The consumers are in cities far removed from the forest and are often ignorant of the destructive nature of their actions and the scale of the ecological footprint left behind in these pristine forests.

By the time Emy and her companions had reached their intended destination, had they not been found by the diligent Customs Officer, their value would have increased perhaps a hundred times, the hunter having ultimately been exploited and at the same time lost what used to be a sustainable resource for his family and his people. His skills developed from childhood are now helping others become very rich and are unwittingly destroying the once close-knit village community way of life he remembers. Although nowhere close to the profits made later in the crime chain, the villager still gets a sum that may be equivalent to several months work for his troubles and here lies the incentive to search for the last remaining tortoise or pangolin in the forest.

Emy had been dropped into a rough sack in the forest, and had followed a long, bumpy journey.  She was brought to a little fenced clearing behind a stone building in the hunter’s village and man-handled onto the dirt floor. Apparently this was the village leader’s property and he carefully organized the collection of animals from different hunters and maintained them until a foreign trader appeared each month to barter for each specimen. Although all animals had their standard price, this varied depending on size, weight and colouration of the individuals – at this point the animals in all their natural beauty became commodities. Carefully hand sketched and coloured drawings had been distributed by the traders to the hunters and these were hanging on the wall of the village head’s house to remind the hunters what the trader was looking for and what they would be well rewarded for finding. Little attempt was made to feed or provide water for the animals from this point onwards, already dehydrated, some, if lucky, would be able to lap up droplets of muddy water used to clean the excrement off their shells when the village head attempted to make his commodities more presentable to the buyer from the city. In the past the little clearing, now holding hundreds of turtles and tortoises, used to house chickens, this was before the more lucrative trade in endangered species was introduced to the village head.

Emy was still strong at this point but being shy she preferred to remain in the confines of her protective shell in the hope that she would be overlooked and could make a dash back to freedom when the time was right. Other forest companions around her were more energetic and continuously searched for an escape route perhaps a weak point in the chicken wire fencing staked at intervals with bamboo sticks. The most energetic turtles had small holes drilled into the edge of their shells with fine strands of string-like rattan threaded through. The end of the rattan leash was attached to an iron pole weighted by a cement block. After they had wandered round and round the clearing, desperate to escape, slowly shortening their umbilical attachment to the pole, these poor animals would end up confined at the very base of the pole.

It was not long before the trader would come visiting and the wild creatures were about to experience the next leg of their miserable journey. The trader arrived in a big truck, whose wheels were caked in thick red mud, picked up during the precarious drive along a freshly opened route through illegally felled forest. The logging roads have made the exploitation of once distant and secure species so much easier, the trader chuckled to himself. After a wad of grimy notes changed hands, what seemed like the complete fauna of a once biodiverse corner of forest were loaded into the truck and packed like machine parts in boxes, crates and rusty wire cages of various sizes. Some of the animals bore horrific wounds, the result of inhumane and cleverly hidden animal traps. The wounds would no doubt fester over the days to come, resulting in the death of these wretched lives long before the final destination was reached.

Emy found herself in a wooden crate squeezed tightly next to seventeen other of her kind and accompanied by several other large muddy shells that were fresh water turtles from the mountain streams.  After what seemed like an endless journey over bumpy and then relatively smooth roads some of the crates were transferred to a smaller van on the outskirts of a busy town and the journey continued for another half day. The van was very hot and it was a relief when the crates were again unloaded this time into a dark warehouse in Kuala Lumpur where they joined many similar crates of varying sizes. If the cramped and dank conditions the large tortoises found themselves in were not already bad enough, they were going to get worse.

Emy and her companions were roughly transferred to an even larger wooden crate. In the dark, hungry and thirsty, she could not make out her surroundings but she could feel the presence of many hundreds of wild creatures around her and although she was at the top of the deep crate she realised that she was supported by layers of unfortunate turtles that filled every inch of space all the way to the bottom. The shells of several turtles at the bottom cracked due to the massive weight they were supporting and every major jolt of this living mass resulted in lower, desperate animals succumbing to the extreme forces in the confined conditions.

Soon after the wooden lid of this life holding sarcophagus had been nailed firmly shut Emy felt a deep cold washing over her shell down to the depths below her. In an attempt to disguise the living consignment the trader and his accomplices had carefully placed a layer of frozen marine creatures on the top. The box was collectively labelled ‘Seafood from Malaysia’. This description was printed on the cargo manifest and was a common ploy used by criminals to transport endangered reptiles through customs checks. From Kuala Lumpur the now dense and disguised cargo was flown to Macau were it awaited the final leg of its journey in yet another warehouse. The storage conditions were not considerate of living creatures, there was no ventilation in the cramped crates and already many turtles and tortoises had died as a result of the inhumane conditions and more were becoming sick, even Emy’s companions from the forested mountains of Malaysia, known for their size and strength were beginning to succumb to severe dehydration.

Emy’s journey from her home took place in 2003 and at that time her kind were highly sought-after, like many other turtles and tortoises, to fulfil the growing consumer demand for wild turtle meat in southern China. Relatively high prices were being paid by the recently affluent bush meat diners of this region. In the past such foreign tortoise meat was seen as a rare delicacy and only consumed by a small minority of the populace able to afford such luxury, but now, with growing affluence, many citizens want to partake in the kind of dining as a dubious status symbol. Sadly only a decade after Emys long and suffering journey, market forces and social habits changed and her species was suddenly valued as a turtle hobbyist commodity and not a bush meat delicacy. It seems that the unsustainable harvest driven by the exotic food trade had resulted in species rarity, which now caught the interest of another exploiting trade in exotic pet reptiles.  

Unfortunately for Emy and all of the other creatures cramped in the containers in 2003 the next stretch of the complex journey which was to take place by river barge from Macau in the Pearl River Delta to Hong Kong, was delayed.

The social and political atmosphere in Hong Kong had changed due to a recent outbreak of an emergent disease called SARS, which was linked with wild animals. The timing could not have been worse for these wretched creatures, and for many the wooden crates they were packed so cruelly in became their tombs.

The criminals behind this wildlife crime could not move the consignment during this period of heightened concern by the authorities over the import of wild animals and the related increase in customs checks of all suspicious cargo entering Hong Kong waters. The wooden crates sat in the warehouse for more than a week with their dead and dying cargo. The total consignment numbered approximately 10,000 Malaysian Box Turtles and 17 Asian Brown Tortoises. The wildlife criminals now speculated on when to move their cargo on to Hong Kong and continued to show no remorse or concern for the conditions in which the commodities were now placed. A week later the time was right and the wooden crates were transport by lorry to a waiting river barge. They were loaded quickly and the consignment which now had also to endure the heat of a warm and humid autumn day made its way across the mouth of the Pearl River Delta. To the dismay of the barge crew operating on behalf of the criminal gang the barge was boarded for a spot check by marine police patrolling the HK waters. The young, keen Officers Wong and Chan, soon became aware of a sickly pungent smell not completely masked by the oil fumes generated by the river barges rumbling engine. Flashlights searching the hold, the smell led the patrol team to the wooden crates and soon the barge was being led to a holding area where customs officers carried out a more detailed investigation of the cargo.

The authorities came to the realization that the gruesome cargo consisted of an estimated 10,000 mostly dead turtles and tortoises. Among the dying some with limbs and heads splayed in a look of exhaustion and others with completely crushed shells, only four of the 17 brown tortoises, that were significantly larger than the masses of black freshwater turtles, were still alive.  The protective shell gave the turtles an evolutionary advantage preventing them from becoming easy supper for eagles and leopards and other predators that are no doubt frustrated by this marvelous design of nature. However, the development of the shell did not factor in the cruelty of some humans. Some of the smugglers were arrested and later jailed.

Surrounded by all this death and sadness Emy was still hanging on. Of the 10,000 plus that started the journey which began on a mountain in a distant land and ended in a port in Hong Kong, Emy and her three companions were the only survivors. Shortly after their discovery, dehydrated and weak, they were transferred to the Wild Animal Rescue Centre at Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden in Hong Kong where they received a veterinary health check and some intensive medical treatment. Three succumbed shortly after due to their severe condition. During her rehabilitation Emy was placed in the hands of an experienced animal care team and when she fully recovered she was transferred into a large outdoor enclosure shared with other rescued tortoises and monitor lizards where she has lived since in peace and safety. She now plays her part in educating the visitors to the centre about the victims of the illegal wildlife trade, her own story and the plight of thousands of other animals that are illegally trafficked in Asia for the food, exotic pet and Asian traditional medicine trade are communicated to visitors. Please come and meet her at the Reptile Lookout when you visit KFBG.

Emy (left) and her friend, Phay (right)

In May 2014 Emy gained a companion when another Asian Brown Tortoise from the northern range of the species was discovered stray in the Hong Kong countryside by a member of the public. No one knows how “Phay” arrived in Hong Kong or whether she, like Emy, had to endure such a horrific journey, but the two now have each other for company in this foreign land. For Emy there is kindness and care at the end of a horrendous journey.

Conservation Note:

KFBG works with international organisations providing the opportunity for rescued endangered turtles and tortoises to enter captive assurance programmes. We plan for the day when the countries of origin of many of the rescued species are ready to repatriate the animals through accredited conservation programmes. The ultimate goal is to reintroduce the extirpated species back into their wild range areas thereby restoring a unique component of the endemic biodiversity.