NEWS 110
38
Bad legislation
Animal shelters and similar institutions
generally have little use for adult swamp
turtles, as these animals are unsuitable as
pets. They are terrarium animals and
belong in the hands of genuine terrarium
keepers, not those of children. But while
nobody ever dreamed of banning people
from keeping and breeding dogs and cats
because every year thousands of them
end up in animal shelters, in the case of
the Red-Eared Turtle the terrarium
enthusiast was published in short order
for the irresponsible behavior of non-
enthusiasts, and the importation of Red-
Ears quite simply wasn't allowed any
more. It isn't forbidden to keep Red-Ears,
but importation into the EU requires a
permit and such permits quite simply
aren't granted. At the same time there is a
simple solution to the problem: all that is
required is to establish a minimum size at
which these turtles can be sold. In that
way serious terrarium keepers could
obtain Red-Ears but the spontaneous
purchase of babies would be prevented.
The Four-Inch Law
The practice of banning the sale of turtles
of less than a certain size (for example 10
cm) has long existed in the USA, albeit for
totally different reasons -
Salmonella
infections where small children were
children and so the ”Four-Inch Law” has
also had a positive effect in that
maltreatment of turtles by small children
has also been prevented.
A European solution
Instead of simply adopting the tried-and-
tested US legislation on the Red-Ear (and
all other swamp turtles), in Europe they
came up with a trick and arranged for the
Red-Eared Turtle to appear on the list of
”endangered species”. Fortunately that is
utter nonsense, the Red-Ear is not
endangered and certainly not by the
trade, because, as already mentioned, it is
A released Red-Ear in the south of France.
Baby Yellow-Ear Turtle.
Lexicon
Swamp turtles
Pseudemys
means ”false Emys”;Emys is
another turtlegenus.
Trachemys
means ”roughEmys”.
scripta
means ”withwriting”.
elegans
means ”elegant”.
troosti:
named inhonor of GeraldTroost
of Nashville,Tennessee (1776-1850).
allowed to play with baby turtles. The
children were putting turtles in their
mouths and falling ill, albeit rarely in
comparison to
Salmonella
infections from
foodstuffs. So they devised the ”Four-
Inch-Law”, a law that prohibits the same of
live turtles with a shell length of less than
4 inches (= 10.2 cm). Leaving aside
Salmonella (there is no real danger of this
from turtles as long as minimal standards
of hygiene are maintained) turtles are
fundamentally unsuitable as pets for small
