How Maryland is fighting back against the illegal turtle trade

Sophie, an almost 3-year-old black Labrador retriever, bounds around a pavilion at Sandy Point State Park.

She rounds a corner, following a scent she’s been trained on. And then, suddenly, Sophie hops on her back legs and gives three short, sharp barks.

She’s found the turtle.

Sophie and her handler, Carl Dunnock, work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. While this search was just for demonstration, the department’s — and Sophie’s — work has been critical as Maryland Department of Natural Resources officials work to safely return poached turtles to the wild.

Last year, DNR released seven wood turtles in an undisclosed location — they don’t want to encourage poachers.

The turtles were repatriated to Maryland after a bust in New York in 2018. In that case, state officials recovered 292 animals, including 53 wood turtles, three king cobras, 184 spotted turtles and six Gila monsters, a legally protected species native to the American Southwest.

It was, at the time, the largest bust of illegally possessed reptiles in New York history. Charges against William Engelder, the man at the center of the case, were dropped in 2020 because prosecutors didn’t file an indictment in time, according to the Olean Times Herald.

Wood turtles, which are native to Maryland and other areas along the East Coast, are considered endangered. One of their biggest threats is poaching.

Wood turtles, which have a 40- to 60-year lifespan, live in wooded areas near freshwater streams. They’re active during the day and often bask in the sunlight on logs or the banks of rivers.

According to the Collaborative to Combat the Illegal Trade in Turtles, nine major trafficking cases were prosecuted in the United States between 2018 and 2022, involving more than 23,000 tortoises and turtles.

That number, the collaborative said, is “just the tip of the iceberg” because it doesn’t account for small cases, open cases, cases involving turtle parts, those that begin abroad or those that go undiscovered by authorities.

Many turtles — and other reptiles — are plucked from the wild and illegally sold because of a growing market for exotic pets, including in Asia. The trade is also fueled by demand for turtle meat, shells, blood and eggs that are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Brooke Talley, strategic coordinator for the collaborative, said she’s aware of more than 3,000 poached turtles seized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service so far this year.

Asian “turtle populations can’t sustain that sort of demand, so they’re getting them from the U.S.,” Talley said. “It’s people in the U.S. that are grabbing them off the landscape. People in the U.S. are driven by money, or greed or desperation.”

Talley declined to share how much a poached turtle can sell for as an exotic pet, so as not to inadvertently encourage other poachers.

While no wildlife biologist likes to see any animal poached, the illegal turtle trade is especially disruptive to local ecosystems because of how turtles reproduce.

Turtles take a long time to reach sexual maturity, so removing even a small number of mature adults can cause “rapid declines” in the local population, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

That’s also why Maryland DNR officials are so careful before releasing turtles back into the wild. An unhealthy turtle, for example, could put a local population at risk.

Ellen Bronson, senior director of animal health, conservation and research at The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, said it was important to repeatedly test the turtles for diseases and not to release them into the wild in areas that had not already been exposed to any illness the turtles might be carrying.

Officials also consider the size of the local turtle population when deciding where to release rehabilitated ones. A local population of 60 turtles would benefit more from the introduction of six adults than a local population of 120 turtles.

Beth Schlimm, a state herpetologist — or reptile scientist — said DNR knew that the turtles from the New York bust likely came from one of Maryland’s larger wood turtle populations, “not a population that necessarily needed the boost of seven additional turtles.”

That’s where Sophie comes in. DNR worked with the USDA detector dog to verify that the release site already had enough turtles to be viable.

“They are much better at finding turtles than us,” said Brian Durkin, a DNR turtle conservation specialist. “I can find a lot, but Sophie’s going to find the ones I just step over.”

Durkin and others, working with Sophie, were able to verify that their chosen location had a sufficiently large turtle population to support the repatriated ones.

In more ways than one, DNR’s mission is not complete after the release. Durkin goes back out and monitors the released turtles to make sure they’re surviving (so far, they have). Schlimm said the department has habitat management and restoration plans for the site, “so we’re in this for the long haul.”

And, significantly, the department is considering changes to the state’s rules on collecting turtles from the wild. Currently, a permit is required if a person wants to possess, breed, sell, offer for sale, trade or barter reptiles or amphibians native to Maryland.

It’s currently legal for a person to collect a turtle out of the wild to keep as a pet, said Karina Stonesifer, DNR’s director of the wildlife and heritage service.

The agency plans to propose a rule change within weeks that would make it illegal to take or possess any reptile or amphibian species that’s native to Maryland.

Once the “commonsense” rule is introduced and finalized after a public comment period, it would be enforceable by the Natural Resources Police, she said.

“A lot of people are shocked you can even take these from the wild now,” Stonesifer said.