“The sites are not held to standards that would keep the public safe. “I think the most important conclusion from our study is that sales of these turtles on the internet are not monitored or reported,” said Marquardt, a recent graduate in environmental science and management. They called for a public health campaign to educate the public about the health concerns.
The students concluded that turtle sales are part of a thriving online wildlife trade in the U.S., owing to the continued popularity of pet turtles and challenges enforcing the federal regulation in most states. “Conducting the research entirely online was really interesting and eye-opening into what research I could do in the future.”
I had always thought of research for environmental sciences as something done in the field or the lab,” said Keane, who is majoring in wildlife and conservation biology. But they don’t verify that with the buyer.” “So, what really surprised me was how easy it was to find these websites and the fact that some of the sites try to cover their tracks by stating that they only sell the turtles for educational purposes, which is exempt in the law. “We know that people sell plenty of things illegally and wildlife is part of that,” said Montague, a recent graduate in environmental science and management. Only about half of the websites included warnings about the health risks or reported the regulations banning the sale of hatchlings as pets.
In all, they documented 515 listings for sales of turtles in violation of federal and state regulations. During the spring and fall of 2021, the students monitored a total of 16 websites that openly advertised and sold turtles of less than 4 inches in size. With Salmonella outbreaks tied to turtles still occurring, the URI students wanted to discover the availability of pet turtles online – an area overlooked by previous research, according to the study. Food and Drug Administration prohibited the sale of live turtles smaller than 4 inches in size. About 280,000 cases were documented annually, especially among children because of poor hygiene after handling turtles or putting small turtles in their mouths. households owned a turtle.Īt the same time, pet turtles were associated with outbreaks of salmonellosis, a serious intestinal illness caused by Salmonella bacteria. in the 1960s and ’70s, growing to annual sales of about 15 million turtles. Sevin, a visiting lecturer in biology at the University of Richmond, oversaw the project.Īccording to the paper, hatchling turtles became increasingly popular in the U.S. Nancy Karraker, a URI professor in natural resources sciences, and Jennifer A. Marcotrigiano was one of four URI undergraduate students to take part in the study, along with Lauren Montague ’22 of Newtown, Connecticut Niamh Keane ’23 of Medford, Massachusetts and Hannah Marquardt ’22 of Manassas, Virginia. “Anyone could just go online and buy a turtle despite the ban and whether the turtle was critically endangered. “It was just crazy how accessible these sales were,” said Juliana Marcotrigiano ’22 of Cranford, New Jersey, a recent graduate in wildlife and conservation biology. The researchers’ paper, “ Online sale of small turtles circumvents public health regulations in the United States,” was published in December in PLoS One, a peer-reviewed, open-access science journal. Food and Drug Administration regulations. In a survey of online websites, the researchers found hundreds of active sales of turtles smaller than 4 inches despite U.S. continue to get around the regulations, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Rhode Island, working with a colleague from the University of Richmond. 30, 2023 – Nearly 50 years after a federal law banned the sale of hatchling turtles because of public health concerns, online pet dealers in the U.S.
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