Appetite for turtles could be their undoing

The turtle tank at Nam Hoa Fish Market is empty, but not to worry: The manager of this bustling Chinatown store says he has plenty in back.

"Big ones," he says, spreading his hands as wide as a Christmas turkey.

He nods to a worker, who slides a large, waxed-cardboard box from a stack behind the counter and strips off the lid. Inside is a squirming burlap bag, from which he dumps two 15-pound softshell turtles that hit the concrete with a clop, then flail helplessly on their backs.

"Miami," the shopkeeper says of the reptiles' origins. "All from Miami."

Fresh off a plane at Los Angeles International Airport, one of the hubs of the sprawling international turtle trade, the critters will help feed a huge and growing appetite for freshwater turtles as food and medicine.

The demand pits ancient culture against modern conservation and increasingly threatens turtle populations worldwide. As Asian economies boomed, more and more people began buying turtle, once a delicacy beyond their budgets. Driven in particular by Chinese demand, Asian consumption has all but wiped out wild turtle populations not just in China, but in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere in the region. Now conservationists fear that the U.S. turtle population could be eaten into extinction.

"It's insatiable," says Matt Aresco, a Florida biologist and director of the private Nokuse Plantation conservation reserve in the Florida Panhandle. "If we harvested every single turtle in Florida and sent every single one to Asia, there would still be a demand for more," he says. "That's how scary it is."

Federal law prohibits the capture of endangered or protected species. But it does not cover common turtles such as Florida's softshells, whose widely varying population estimates range from 4 million to 20 million. Softshells also abound in other, mostly Southern, states, some of which, including Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi, have banned or severely limited commercial harvests. Until recently, Florida had no limits on softshell harvests.

In Chinese communities around the world, turtles are coveted for their meat, which is thought to enhance longevity and sexual prowess. They're also used to make tonics believed to boost the immune system, and for other traditional medicines intended to treat an array of ailments, including cancer, arthritis and heart disease.