The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is banning the commercial collection of wild turtles from public property.
It's an effort to stop the export of turtles to Asia, where they're eaten.
"We have about 100,000 turtles per year that are collected, bought or sold, mostly to Asian markets for meat products. They're shipped live in cooled containers to make sure they arrive in suitable fashion," TPWD biologist Matt Wagner said.
Turtle meat is considered a delicacy in China. But the turtle population there has been depleted so quickly that now thousands of Texas turtles get a one-way ticket to the Far East.
"Collectors are coming in to other countries, in particular Texas, where we have fairly lenient rules and so we need to make sure we're protecting our turtle population from overcollecting," Wagner said.
The practice of trapping turtles and shipping them overseas has been perfectly legal, until now. In a couple of days, a new law will prohibit commercial collectors from taking Texas turtles out of the wild. There about 50 Texas turtle dealers who export out of state.
"This is really a new era for Parks and Wildlife, when you start talking about the commercial turtle harvest, which is something we didn't realize is quite so big," Wagner said.
But the law directed at keeping Texas turtles out of Asian grocery stores would also keep them out of local pet stores.
"The laws that are coming up will basically ban us from selling this species, even though it was captive born at my home here in Austin," Herpeton Exotic Pets Manager Walter Sizemore said.
The problem is that there's no way of proving that. And Texas Parks and Wildlife says they'd rather be safe than sorry.
As for pet turtle lovers, the law allows for people to keep as many as six wild turtles as pets.
The new law does allow the collection of three turtle species from private land. They are the common snapping turtle, soft-shell turtles and the red-eared slider.
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