E-commerce promotes trade in invasive turtles in China,Oryx

当前位置： X-MOL 学术 › Oryx › 论文详情

Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)

E-commerce promotes trade in invasive turtles in China
Oryx ( IF 2.2 ) Pub Date : 2020-01-17 , DOI: 10.1017/s0030605319001030
Sha Liu , Chris Newman , Christina D. Buesching , David W. Macdonald , Yu Zhang , Kai-Jie Zhang , Feng Li , Zhao-Min Zhou

Freshwater habitats in China are potentially suitable for invasive alien turtle species and, consequently, raising turtles in aquaculture facilities and the trade in turtles this supplies pose risks to habitats and native wetland communities when exotic turtles escape or are released deliberately. Online trade (e-commerce) is making an increasing contribution to turtle sales in China, seemingly driving demand and thus potentially exacerbating the risk of release. We document the scale and spatial pattern of online sales of non-native turtles over 90 days on China's Taobao.com e-commerce site. The majority of sales were in the ecologically sensitive middle and lower Yangtze river basin (82.35% of > 840,000 slider turtles Trachemys scripta elegans, and 68.26% of > 100,000 snapping turtles, Chelydridae spp.). These species are native to the Americas. Concurrently, over 2008–2018, we found 104 mentions of feral turtle issues listed on Baidu News where, among the 53 prefectures mentioned, issues with invasive turtle populations also focused predominantly in the middle and lower Yangtze river basin. Although circumstantial, this association suggests that the substantial online sale of alien turtles could be having detrimental effects in China's Yangtze river basin. It is important to safeguard these wetland habitats, which are of global importance, by improving policies for detecting and regulating invasive alien turtle issues and by warning consumers about the ecological hazard of their purchases.

更新日期：2020-01-17

点击分享查看原文

点击收藏

公开下载

阅读更多本刊最新论文本刊介绍/投稿指南11