The yuan, a type of soft-shelled turtle famed in Chinese legend and able to trace its family tree some 175 million years, is in danger of being wiped out.

If urgent assistance is not provided, people may have to visit a temple to see what the creature once looked like.

According to Chinese legend, the creature was the Hercules of the turtle world, able to move elegantly even carrying a 150-kilogram granite stone and five beefy men on its back. Architects in ancient times took to using its image as the base for stone steles bearing inscriptions of a temple’s history or merit.

As things stand now, sightings of real yuan turtles in the wild are rare. Even Wu Weili, director of the nature reserve for turtles in Qingtian County, Zhejiang Province, has only seen them once since 1999: they were for sale at a local market.

The yuan is bigger and with a shorter neck than most soft-shelled turtles. It has webbed toes and claws on its three inside toes. But the biggest difference, Wu pointed out, that other turtles have protruding mouths.

The yuan used to occupy a vast area in China, from Hainan Island in the south to the Yellow River in the north.

Since the 1970s, the yuan population has been dwindling. Now, there are only about 200 of them left, thinly scattered along the Oujiang River in Zhejiang Province, the Suijiang River in Guangdong and the Lancang River in Yunnan.

A survey by the Water and Resources Department of Qingtian County revealed that in 2000, only 80 were found along the Oujiang River, an area where they had once thrived

Between 1965 and 1975, intensive hunting by local villagers turned the area into a killing field.

One fisherman said he could not remember how many he caught during that period. The biggest one, he recalled, weighed more than 42 kilograms.

Because that many people fancied the turtle as a delicacy, local fisherman sought new ways to catch them. One simple but lethal method was to put many hooks on one rope. Once hooked, the harder the turtle struggled to free itself, the more entangled it became.

One fisherman admitted that his best catch using this method was five or six in one night.

The slaughter went on until 1989, when the yuan turtle was put under government protection.

What followed, however, was not respite but a new battle against ignorance and greed.

In August 1996, one week after nature reserve officers returned a turtle they had rescued from a fisherman to the Oujiang River, it was caught again.

In July 1997, at Sizhai Village in Qingtian County, a group of children discovered a turtle weighing about 13 kilograms. For no reason, they stoned it to death.

To solve the problem, in 2000 the Zhejiang provincial government designated about 360 hectares of the river as a nature reserve, giving the creatures an area in which they could breed. Regulations prohibit building or other human activities in the area, and water pollution of any kind is strictly forbidden.

According to Wu, yuan turtles are very picky about their living environment. They need clear and slow-moving water, clean air, sufficient fish and shrimp as food, quiet sandy areas for them to spawn and enough sunshine.

Although the turtles spawn twice a year, normally in July and September, with 20 to 30 eggs at one time, their survival rate is very low because of flooding, otters, livestock and human interference.

A breeding ground covering about two hectares has been set aside in the reserve at a cost of 800,000 yuan (US$96,386).

In April this year, another rescue center and artificial insemination area, covering 300 square meters, was opened in Guangning County, Guangdong Province. “The problem now hinges upon management and protection outside the core protection zone, since the environments of different areas are closely related,” said Wu.

According to China’s Wildlife Protection Law, protection zones are divided into core and buffer zones. The latter are never off limits to humans.

The upper reaches of the Oujiang River are being dredged, and the muddy water is drifting down to the nature reserve. Inside the buffer area, a hot-pot restaurant discharges its waste directly into the river. Campfire ashes, broken beer bottles and plastic bags are scattered on the restaurant’s front lawn. About 100 meters away from the nature reserve is a garbage dump. Nearby is a construction site for a gasoline station.

Local law enforcement departments have ordered that these polluting sites all be demolished.

Meanwhile, downstream from the reserve a highway is being constructed. To minimize the possible damage, plans for a roadbed bridge have been canceled.

The group building the highway is going the extra mile for the yuan turtle. It has offered the reserve 1.5 million yuan (US$180,723) to help it protect the creatures.

Still, the outlook remains bleak. “Frankly speaking, it’s hard for humans to use any artificial means to rescue a species that is dying out,” Wu said. “The best protection is to leave them alone in the first place.”

(China Daily July 6, 2004)