An interesting game was designed by Education for Nature Vietnam to equip students with knowledge about turtles and their current situation.

A group of students playing a game to raise awareness about turtles. The future of many species of turtles now depends on public awareness.

On each table in the classroom there’s a colourful map decorated with cute little figures. Surrounding each map, a group of four kids, one after the other, throws dice. If the dice land in the square labelled “Doctor Turtle”, the thrower must answer one question about the animal in order to move forward.

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“What is the turtle’s greatest enemy in Viet Nam?” one card reads during Dinh Hong Anh’s turn.

Contemplating for a while, Anh finally says, “Human beings.”

Bingo! The student couldn’t be more correct.

This interesting game was designed by Education for Nature Viet Nam (ENV) to equip students with knowledge about turtles and their current situation, as many precious species are now on the verge of extinction, mainly due to human activity.

Anh said, “Turtles are a familiar animal to us; I often find them in my grandmother’s garden, but I’ve only learned about the biological characteristics through this game. It’s very interesting, and now I know to count a turtle’s age by the number of rings on its shell.”

Asian Turtle Programme (ATP) official Hoang Van Ha, who was also the game’s instructor, said, “We’ll work together with secondary schools to integrate this play-to-learn activity for students in the 6th grade as a mandatory lesson, particularly in areas where turtles are highly susceptible to being wiped out.”

It was gradually revealed to the class at Cuc Phuong Secondary School that Viet Nam was one of the most important Asian hot spots in terms of turtle varieties, and was home to 25 species of tortoises and freshwater turtles.

Particularly, Viet Nam is host to two of the last four Rafetus swinhoei turtles thought to be left in the world. This species is listed under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Red Book 2009 as critically endangered.

One is the famous turtle living in Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of the capital. The other was recently photographed in Dong Mo Lake in Son Tay District, Ha Noi, the first images of a Rafetus in the wild taken since 2007.

According to ENV director Dang Minh Ha, over the past 15 years, most of the turtle species in the wild in Viet Nam have witnessed remarkable losses, mainly due to smuggling to China.

Douglas Hendrie, ENV technical advisor, said, “We’ve seen tonnes of turtles shifted over the border to China. The authorities stop some, but they can’t catch them all.”

The ENV has recorded 434 cases of illegal hunting, trading and transporting of tortoises and freshwater turtles since 2005. This includes 163 smuggling cases with a total weight of 25,000 tonnes, or more than 3,000 turtles.

Turtles delivered from Viet Nam satisfy China’s increasing demands for the animal as a gourmet cooking and valued ingredient for traditional medicine.

Tim McCormack, the ATP programme co-ordinator, said, “The extinction of some [turtle] species is probably happening within our lifetime if the situation doesn’t improve dramatically.”

Another species, pond turtles, which are only endemic to lowland wetland areas in central Viet Nam, are also critically endangered. The construction of a rescue station and conservation park in the central province of Quang Ngai starting earlier this month is one of the efforts to save these rare turtles right at the place where they belong to.

Turtles rescued from illegal trading cases are often transferred to live in the Turtle Conservation Centre under the Cuc Phuong National Park in the northern province of Ninh Binh.

The centre, on an area of 2,300sq.m, is now home to 1,100 turtles of 20 different species, according to Bui Dang Phong, deputy director of Cuc Phuong National Park.

Phong said, “Besides taking care of turtles that have been confiscated, we also breed new ones.”

A visitor’s centre was officially opened to public last Wednesday to provide information about 25 tortoise and freshwater turtle species.

Visitors also have the chance to enjoy interactive exhibits and hands-on displays as they walk through the centre, which houses information boards, a turtle aquarium, an incubating room, a young turtle nurturing room and trap emulating logs.

Phong said as the average amount of visitors could reach up to 80,000 people per year, the centre hoped that information on the turtle crisis would reach a very large audience. “The situation is so desperate that the existence of several species now heavily depends on public awareness.”

After the lesson, Anh and his friends travelled to the Turtle Conservation Centre as its first visitors. Seeing how gentle they were playing with turtles, it was hard to tell those innocent kids how cruelly other turtles were being treated elsewhere.

VietNamNet/Vietnam News