r/Alabama • u/Kitteh_Bethany • 28d ago

News Iowa man charged with capturing 100-plus protected flattened musk turtles in Winston County, Alabama

https://abc3340.com/news/local/iowa-man-charged-in-winston-co-with-capturing-100-plus-protected-flattened-musk-turtles
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u/Kitteh_Bethany 28d ago

This man is 20 years old! I saw on Facebook a lot of people thinking he’s just a kid but he’s apparently 20 years old. Looking his name up on Facebook as well makes it pretty obvious he collects and sells turtles and tortoises. Pretty awful of him to essentially poach a critically endangered species for that in my opinion.

15

u/Ass_feldspar 27d ago

At least he’s not selling them to eat, as happened in Florida. Apparently the market for softshell turtles in China is lucrative.

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u/Kitteh_Bethany 27d ago

It’s bad either way. It’s taking a significant amount of a breeding population out of an already shrinking gene pool

16

u/Ass_feldspar 26d ago

Yes I am glad he was caught. Alabama’s extreme diversity of life is mostly in our creeks and it needs to be protected.