E-commerce promotes trade in invasive turtles in China


SHA L IU,CHRIS NEWMAN,CHRISTIN A D. B UESCHING,DAV I D W. MAC D O N A L D YU ZHANG,KAI -J IE ZHANG,F ENG L I and ZHAO-MIN ZHOU


Abstract Freshwater habitats in China are potentially suit- able for invasive alien turtle species and, consequently, rais- ing turtles in aquaculture facilities and the trade in turtles this supplies pose risks to habitats and native wetland com- munities when exotic turtles escape or are released deliber- ately. Online trade (e-commerce) is making an increasing contribution to turtle sales in China, seemingly driving de- mand 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 ecologi- cally 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 fo- cused predominantly in the middle and lower Yangtze river basin. Although circumstantial, this association suggests that the substantial online sale of alien turtles could be hav- ing 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.


Keywords Asia, biodiversity, Chelydra, China, Macrochelys, online trade, Trachemys, Yangtze river basin


I


ntroductions of invasive alien species have a major global impact on ecosystem integrity (Macdonald et al., 2007;


Pejchar & Mooney, 2009), with negative consequences for community structure and diversity that can persist for dec- ades (Sharpe et al., 2017). Developing countries undergoing rapid economic growth can be especially vulnerable to such


SHA LIU,YU ZHANG,KAI-JIE ZHANG,FENG LI and ZHAO-MIN ZHOU (Corresponding author,


introductions, driven by new commercial opportunities (Pelicice et al., 2014). In China the profitability of selling exotic species has led to substantial numbers being bred in captivity to supply demand for pets, Chinese traditional medicine, and food (Lin et al., 2015). Online trade, or e-com- merce, has become a major distribution channel, exac- erbating the spread of invasive species and challenging biosecurity (Lenda et al., 2014; Humair et al., 2015). Although the slider turtle Trachemys scripta elegans


(Ficetola et al., 2009) and snapping turtles of the genera Chelydra and Macrochelys (Kobayashi et al., 2006), all native to the Americas, are amongst the most invasive exotic species, the market for these taxa and the extent of their colonization has not been assessed in China. Turtles are bred in freshwater aquaculture facilities in China, 65%of which are in the Yangtze river basin (Chen et al., 2009). This region is highly susceptible to the establishment of alien invasive turtles (e.g. T. scripta elegans, Xiao, 2015; Chelydra serpentina, Chen et al., 2017; Macrochelys tem- minckii, Chen, 2017) because of the area’s suitable cli- mate and habitats. Here we evaluate how online trade (e-commerce) adds a new dimension to this problem, facili- tating purchase of turtles, driving production in breeding facilities, and risking escape and release of turtles along all stages of the supply chain (Kraus, 2015). We document national online sales of live slider and snapping turtles via mainland China’s largest domestic consumer-to-consumer internet trading platform, Taobao.com (a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group). We examine the spatial distribution of turtle sales to generate a sales map, and explore how this is associated with media reports of feral turtle populations in the Yangtze river basin, and provide recommendations for how to mitigate turtle trade and the establishment of invasive species. We conducted three surveys (24 February–27 March


orcid.org/0000-0003-4824-7371) Key Laboratory of Southwest China


Wildlife Resources Conservation (Ministry of Education), China West Normal University, Nanchong, China. E-mail zhouzm81@gmail.com


CHRIS NEWMAN,CHRISTINA D. BUESCHING and DAVID W. MACDONALD Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, The Recanati–Kaplan Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK


Received 22 February 2019. Revision requested 17 April 2019. Accepted 16 August 2019. First published online 17 January 2020.


2017, 14 April–10 May 2017, 3–18 October 2017), searching for the terms ‘slider turtle, live’ and ‘snapping turtle, live’ (in Chinese) on Taobao.com. We included ‘live’ to distin- guish animals traded, as opposed to toys, pet supplies, and similar items. To avoid recording a vendor’s goods sold more than once, we re-inspected vendors after an interval of at least 30 days to see if they had made subsequent sales of additional goods. When new vendors comprised,3%of total vendors on our list in each survey, we ceased searching for additional vendors, assuming we had accounted for the majority.


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 352–355 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001030


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