- More than half of the world’s 359 turtle and tortoise species now face extinction, with the crisis worsening despite global conservation efforts.
- Asia is the epicenter of the crisis, accounting for 32 of the 66 most threatened species due to intense harvesting, illegal trade and habitat destruction.
- The economics of extinction create a vicious cycle, where rarer species become more valuable to collectors, incentivizing further hunting of the few remaining individuals.
- Successful conservation projects include habitat protection, captive breeding, community engagement and adaptive management, with local communities playing a crucial role.
“Most people have a turtle story, whether that’s seeing a turtle at an aquarium, having a turtle as a pet as a kid, or they helped one cross the road, or one happened across their backyard one day,” Jordan Gray, from the Turtle Survival Alliance, told Mongabay.
For many Indigenous cultures, turtles hold profound spiritual significance. Some refer to North America itself as Turtle Island. These ancient creatures seem to inspire an innate human connection, but these survivors of the age of dinosaurs now face their greatest challenge: us.
More than half of the world’s turtle and tortoise species now face extinction, according to the 2025 “Turtles in Trouble: The World’s Most Endangered Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles” report compiled by the Turtle Conservation Coalition.
According to the report, 196 of the world’s 359 living turtle and tortoise species are now considered threatened under the criteria of the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. Of these, 134 species (36.8%) are classified as endangered or critically endangered. The situation has deteriorated since the last major evaluation seven years ago. Five species have gone extinct in modern times.
“The crisis is worsening,” said Gray, one of the report’s editors. “Despite all of our collective efforts as a global turtle conservation community, the number and percentage of threatened species have increased…But, there are success stories that offer hope.”
The report lists the top 66 species facing the most imminent threat of extinction. To identify the species in most immediate peril, the Turtle Conservation Coalition — which includes the Turtle Survival Alliance and other conservation groups — polled approximately 30 leading global turtle conservationists. They considered factors such as extinction risk, population trajectories, endemism, and evolutionary uniqueness to compile the list.
Asia: The epicenter of crisis
Asia has emerged as the epicenter of the turtle extinction crisis, harboring 32 of the 66 most threatened species (48.4%). The region has high turtle diversity, but also sees intense harvesting of both adult turtles and their eggs, the mostly illegal international trade in turtles and turtle products, and a high density of humans encroaching into turtle habitat. The use of turtle products in traditional Chinese medicine means strong financial incentives for poaching.
China alone accounts for nine of the most threatened species, with the Asian box turtle genus Cuora representing six species on the list. The golden-headed box turtle (Cuora aurocapitata) exemplifies this crisis. It hasn’t been seen in the wild since 2013 despite extensive searching, surviving only in captive-breeding programs.
Likewise, Zhou’s box turtle (Cuora zhoui) has never been documented in the wild by scientists since it was first described from market specimens in 1990, and no new specimens have been reported since 2009.
Global patterns of decline
While Asia faces the most severe crisis, troubling patterns emerge worldwide. Madagascar is home to five highly endangered species, with the ploughshare tortoise (Astrochelys yniphora) described in the report as perhaps the world’s most critically endangered tortoise, with likely no more than a few dozen wild adults still remaining despite armed guards protecting both wild and captive populations.
North America faces different but equally severe challenges. Mexico leads the Americas’ regional crisis with eight species on the list. The world’s smallest turtle species, the Vallarta mud turtle (Kinosternon vogti), survives in less than 25 hectares (62 acres) of wetlands near the city of Puerto Vallarta. More than 99% of its habitat has been destroyed to build resorts.
The economics of extinction
“The poaching problem I see as a very severe one, because the more critically endangered an animal becomes, then it becomes on the poaching list because they can get so much more money for it,” Kristin Berry, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who has studied tortoises for decades but wasn’t involved in compiling the report, told Mongabay. “And just in the last week, we’ve had announcements of people caught smuggling endangered turtles.”
In late July, Spanish authorities discovered 20 black-breasted leaf turtles (Geoemyda spengleri), an endangered and protected species, crammed into socks and hidden among children’s toys in a shipping container from China. Many animals died during transport, a common occurrence in the illegal trade.
The economics of extinction creates a vicious cycle. The rarer the species, the more valuable it becomes to collectors, which incentivizes more intensive hunting of the few remaining individuals.
The very characteristics that have allowed turtles and tortoises to survive since the age of dinosaurs now make them especially vulnerable to modern pressures. These creatures exemplify a slow and steady lifestyle strategy that has served them well for millions of years, but now, in the face of modern pressures, it can be a big liability.
Young turtles face numerous predators, with only a small percentage surviving into adulthood. Those that do survive compensate through extraordinary longevity, some living to the age of 200 years. And most females lay eggs well into their final years.
However, this reproductive strategy has become a weakness under human pressure. Removing an adult female turtle from the wild also removes the hundreds to thousands of eggs it might have laid during its lifetime. If enough of them disappear, the population collapses. And once depleted, turtle and tortoise populations are very slow to recover, if they recover at all.
“[Turtles and tortoises] are collectively such an important part of habitats and ecosystems throughout the world,” Berry said.
Conservation success
Armed guards once protected the last Pinta giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger abingdonii) on the island of Pinta in the Galápagos. That tortoise, named Lonesome George, died in 2012, marking the extinction of an entire subspecies. Yet on the neighboring island of Española, successful breeding programs have brought the Hood Island tortoise (C. n. hoodensis) back from the brink, from just 13 surviving individuals, demonstrating that targeted conservation can work, when it’s not done too late.
The western swamp turtle (Pseudemydura umbrina) population in Australia recovered from a low of fewer than 30 individuals in 1987 to approximately 300 through captive breeding and habitat management. Since 2016, assisted migration trials have established new populations at cooler, wetter southern sites as climate change makes northern habitats unsuitable.
Buying private land has become an important way to help turtles, with conservation groups purchasing key habitats for species like Dahl’s toad-headed turtle (Mesoclemmys dahli) in Colombia, where a 220-hectare (540-acre) reserve now protects 30% of the species’ genetic diversity.
“There are so many challenges [in turtle conservation] and just buying habitat is not enough,” Berry said. “We need to raise the little ones, and I know that from one of the head starting programs I was involved with, we need to get them to the point where they can start laying eggs and then breeding and so that you have an actual breeding group of tortoises, and then you have to get it to the viability stage. “The best programs do four things together: protect the animals where they live; breed them in safe places; get local people involved; and change the approach when needed.
“Conservation starts and stops at the community level,” Gray said. “We can all have dreams about what we want our conservation projects to achieve and what the future holds for these populations. But we have to work with the people on the ground — the communities who live there. We often say turtles live among communities, but the reality is that communities live among the turtles, because the turtles were there first by millions of years.”
This community-centered approach plays out in Indonesia’s Aceh province, home to the critically endangered painted terrapin (Batagur borneoensis). Here, local fishermen are provided incentives to protect nests rather than harvest the turtle’s eggs.
In 2025 alone, this program protected 111 nests containing more than 2,200 eggs, with more than 4,400 hatchlings released back to wild populations.
Captive breeding and head start projects are also important parts of turtle recovery. Headstart programs, where eggs are collected in the wild, hatched and juveniles raised and released when they have a better chance of survival, have made a huge difference in recovering sea turtle populations.
Turtle Survival Alliance is currently working with 43 of the 66 species listed in the report. It holds assurance populations for many species, like a turtle bank, in hopes that it will be safe again to re-introduce them to their homes.
“I get this question all the time, you know, how can I make a difference in conservation?” Gray said. “There’s a place for everybody in turtle conservation, everybody can do something, and no matter how big or small that is, it makes a difference.”
The most impactful actions, he said, include donating to turtle conservation organizations and habitat protection groups, since “we can do everything for these species, but without suitable habitat their future remains unstable.”
But individual actions matter too. Helping turtles cross roads safely, spreading awareness in local communities, and sharing conservation stories all contribute to the larger effort.
Because these are long-lived species with slow reproduction, “Every turtle counts,” Gray said, “if you’ve made a difference for that turtle, there’s a good chance that you made a difference for that population.”
Liz Kimbrough is a senior staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University, in New Orleans, Louisiana where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
Banner image: Pan’s box turtle (Cuora pani) Image by Chelsea Rinn.
More than 10,000 species on brink of extinction need urgent action: Study
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