Mexico’s Vallarta Mud Turtle: A Little Turtle in Need of a Big Helping Hand By Andrew Walde As I look out the airplane window, I reflect; after a 20-year absence, I’m about to land in Mexico for the third time this year. This mission is a little different—no thorn scrub, no tropical forests, just the concrete jungle that is Puerto Vallarta. Here, luxury resorts, hotels, and rentals now span the entirety of the coastline of the Bay of Banderas. Tourism is flourishing, with millions descending on this port city each year to enjoy its beaches, nightlife, culture, and cuisine. Long before the city ..read more

Meet the awesome Arakan Forest Turtle! This Critically Endangered turtle is named for the Arakan Mountains of western Myanmar, and is also native to Bangladesh. Camouflaged by its dark brown skin and dark brown to tan carapace, this turtle seamlessly blends into the leafy forest floor it traverses. This turtle has been observed burrowing under leaves during the hottest parts of the day, and is largely active at night. These turtles look similar to other species native to the same area, like young Asian Giant Tortoises, but have certain traits that set them apart, such as long, sharp claws that ..read more

This fantastic flapjack tortoise always draws the spotlight thanks to its unique, flat shape. Its flat body allows this tortoise to avoid predators by squeezing inside deep cracks and crevices of boulders for safety. Once inside the cracks, they can fill their lungs with air, causing their shells to expand, allowing them to fit more snugly between these rocks. This makes it extremely difficult for predators to dislodge them. Unfortunately, its fascinating qualities make this tortoise desirable for poaching for the pet trade, resulting in the drastic decrease in its population. It now only exis ..read more

Hailing from Mexico, this speckled turtle is one of the many species that make up this turtle-rich country. The Spotted Box Turtle (Terrapene nelsoni) has a brown carapace spattered with creamy yellow spots, and like all box turtles, it has the ability to close up its shell entirely, thanks to the hinge on its plastron. Males commonly develop large bulbous heads and pronounced beaks, which they use for fighting over burrows, females, and territory. To support this area of the world in dire need of conservation interventions, we work with Mexican nonprofits, such as Estudiantes Conservando la ..read more

Meet the small but strapping Spider Tortoise! This little tortoise is native to the southern extremes of Madagascar. With its black and straw-yellow carapace, it bears similarities to a fellow Malagasy species—one that it often shares habitat with—the Radiated Tortoise. This compact chelonian is distinguished from its much larger counterpart by its petite size and its shell pattern named for the web-like striations. There are three subspecies of Spider Tortoise: Northern, Southern, and Common. The Common and Southern subspecies can be distinguished by the range in mobility of the hinge on the ..read more

The Bog Turtle is a diminutive species native to the eastern United States that is quickly recognized by the distinctive yellow, orange, pink, or red patches that adorn the sides of its head. This dark mahogany-colored beauty holds the title as the smallest turtle in the country, typically ranging just 3 to 4.5 inches in length. The Bog Turtle is well adapted to a semi aquatic lifestyle in shallow wetlands, where its low profile facilitates movement through dense vegetation, muck, and subterranean tunnels. The Turtle Survival Alliance-North American Freshwater Turtle Research Group (TSA-NAFTRG ..read more

The Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ Saving Animals From Extinction (AZA SAFE) Radiated Tortoise program is a huge conservation boon for Turtle Survival Alliance. Thousands of Radiated Tortoises have been saved from trafficking, rehabilitated, and reintroduced into protected areas thanks to support from the AZA SAFE. AZA featured our work with the Radiated Tortoise in their most recent edition of Connect. Our Radiated Tortoise program was an inaugural recipient of the SAFE Granting program in 2019. Since then, we’ve achieved and surpassed numerous conservation goals with this critically en ..read more

We’re so excited to share our first #TurtleOfTheWeek of 2024! This week, meet the Keeled Box Turtle. These unique little turtles are named for the three ridges, or keels, running down their backs. Think of them as having shells like little overturned boat hulls navigating leafy forest floors in Southeast Asia. These overexploited, endangered turtles are collected for the food and pet trades, and occasionally for traditional medicine. Habitat destruction, particularly the logging of old-growth forests, also greatly threatens their future. Turtle Survival Alliance works to preserve the ..read more

Our final #TurtleOfTheWeek for 2023 is the striking North American Wood Turtle! The Wood Turtle can be found in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions of the United States and parts of southeastern Canada. There, this turtle stands out from the pack with bright orange, pink, red, or yellow skin and well-defined shell scutes, as though they were carved from wood. It inhabits water-rich areas like riparian woodlands, moist meadows, vegetated floodplains, and cool, clear-to-relatively clear streams, creeks, and rivers. For much of the year they are obligated to an aquatic lifestyle where ..read more

This turtle is found in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico–the second most turtle-rich country in the world. This musk turtle is larger than many other mud and musk turtles found in the region, averaging 6-8 inches in length, but can be up to 10 inches. It features a long carapace with three distinct ridges, or keels, and has a large pointed head and prominent jaws. Due to habitat conversion, largely for cropland, livestock pastureland, logging operations, and tourism, and increasingly, poaching for the international pet trade, the many turtles and tortoises of Mexico are under threat. The Pac ..read more