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Turtle Survival
A PUBLICATION OF THE TURTLE SURVIVAL ALLIANCE
2016
In the "full court press" world of TSA and the
steady demand to move forward with new
programs and facilities, or respond to new crises,
there is rarely time to reflect on our past. But re-
cently I was flipping through our 2006 magazine
and what struck me was how far we have come as
an organization, and with some of our signature
programs, in just ten years.
In 2006 we were coming off of Year 1 of our
first major conservation grant from the Batchelor
Foundation - $100,000 in 2005 that really al-
lowed TSA to begin investing in a diverse portfolio
of range country programs that included Thai-
land, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia, Mexico, India,
China and Vietnam.
We hit the ground running in India where,
based on recommendations from a 2005 stra-
tegic planning workshop that set conservation
priorities for India's diverse turtle fauna, the
TSA started working on the iconic Red-crowned
Roofed Turtle, designated as the flagship species
for our India program. The National Chambal
Sanctuary (NCS) is the last stronghold for this
critically endangered river turtle, but there was a
high incidence of nest loss due to jackal predation.
In 2006 the TSA launched a program in the NCS
and established protected riverine hatcheries
where hundreds of clutches of river terrapin eggs
were moved for incubation. This highly success-
ful program is now in its tenth year, and tens of
thousands of river terrapin hatchlings, that would
otherwise have been lost to predation, have been
released in the Chambal. In 2010 we expanded
into four additional ecoregions in India, each
with its own suite of target species and unique
challenges. Today the TSA manages three turtle
conservation and outreach centers, is actively
engaged with riverine communities to reduce
pressures on limited freshwater resources, and is
rapidly becoming integrated into state govern-
ment species conservation plans; being called
upon regularly to assist with confiscations an