Illegal fishing blamed for protected turtle death

An adult female royal turtle, among 21 of the endangered species released into the wild with installed microchips and GPS transmitters in 2015, has been found dead due to illegal electrofishing in Koh Kong province’s Sre Ambel district. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) yesterday, fishermen found the body of a royal turtle floating along the Sre Ambel river system, an  area in Cambodia where the river meets the sea and where some of the turtles call home.
 

The turtle was about 11 years old and weighed nine kilograms, it added. The WCS and the Fisheries Administration (FiA) inspected the turtle and found it had been killed by illegal electrofishing, based on the marks on its head.
 

The royal turtle, also known as the southern river terrapin (Batagur affinis), was designated Cambodia’s national reptile in 2005. It was listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature last year and added to their Red List of Threatened Species. In Hul, an FiA official who works directly to conserve this critically endangered species, told Khmer Times that the dead turtle was found on February 6.

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