Population of world’s rarest giant turtle rises to 4 with new discovery

When Cu Rua, an old Yangtze giant softshell turtle, died in Vietnam in 2016, he left behind only three of his kind: an elderly pair in a Chinese zoo, and a wild individual in a Vietnamese lake called Dong Mo. This meant that the Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei), one of the world’s largest known freshwater turtle species, also became one of the world’s rarest. Now, some turtle experts are confident they’ve identified a fourth specimen of this critically endangered turtle in Vietnam’s Xuan Khanh lake. “It’s a good feeling to confirm the presence of a fourth turtle; it gives us hope something can be done to bring the species back,” Timothy McCormack, program coordinator of  the Hanoi-based Asian Turtle Program of Indo-Myanmar Conservation (ATP/IMC), a U.K.-based conservation charity, told Mongabay. “I’ve put a lot of time into looking for this species and have always believed it has a chance.” Nguyen Tai Thang of the ATP/IMC surveying Xuan Khanh Lake in Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Nguyen Van Trong/ATP. But this confirmation comes after a long and winding journey. Reports of a plausible giant softshell turtle in Xuan Khanh Lake first surfaced in 2012 in the form of a photograph, McCormack said. The image wasn’t sufficiently clear to confirm the species, though, and intensive surveys of the lake over subsequent years failed to confirm the turtle’s presence. Then, in May 2017, Nguyen Van Trong, a former fisherman who now works with ATP/IMC, photographed what looked like a giant softshell turtle. Again, the blurry…

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