Dog The Bounty Hunter

Aussie pup sniffs out, hunts down invasive red-eared slider turtles in Victoria. Good dog!

Dubai Dubai Do!

Gulf News has an interesting article about invasive species in Dubai. Scientists from the Wadi Fish Project have been finding everything from American red-eared slider turtlesre (Trachemys scripta elegans), abandoned as unwanted pets, to tilapia, stocked to provide fishing opportunities. An intriguing look at introduced species issues in a country that gets little environmental press coverage here in the USA. This older article at UAE Interact mentions additional non-native species present in the United Arab Emirates, including parakeets, mynahs and crows, and the Floridian snail Polygyra cereolus.

This marks the first post about the UAE on the ISW.

Turtle Power!

Andrew B. sends in this story from the Manawatu Standard about the red-eared slider turtle (Chrysemys scripta elegans) in New Zealand. Sliders are North American species, and are often kept as pets or used as food in other countries. A wild slider was recently discovered hanging out by Kawau Stream and later captured by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. Apparently they've taken a liking to the turtle, who is now named Donatello. Wildlife officials aren't sure if the turtle is a recent escape, but New Zealand is currently thought to have too cold a climate for red-eared sliders to overwinter there.

Weekend Photoblogging

turtle!
Originally uploaded by budak

Red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) hanging out in a wetland reserve in Singapore.

Thanks to budak for sharing this photo under a CC license!

Slider Show

Nature might be taking care of Santa Cruz, California's red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans, formerly genus Chrysemys - thanks Sven!) problem. According to this article at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, park officials from Natural Bridges State Beach have noticed that local raccoons are snatching up the non-native turtles for dinner, and the officials aren't exactly upset about it. The red-eared sliders, most likely released by unthinking pet owners, are thought to compete with rare Western pond turtles (Clemmys marmorata) for food, and have been observed eating the legs off local frogs.

Tip of the virtual hat to the Protect Your Waters website. Negative bonus points to the Sentinel for running a big 'ol ad for TurtleSale.com right smack in the center of the article!

Island Pressed

Having never mentioned Bahrain* on the ISW before, I could not resist posting about this brief article from the Gulf Daily News. Too bad I missed out on the recent lecture by Abdulqader Khamis that the article refers to. Based on the summary, it sounds like Bahrainians need a little public outreach so they know it's not a good idea to release their pets into the wild: feral cats (Felis catus), red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans), and the Indian mongoose (Herpestes javanicus) are all causing problems. The Indian house crow (Corvus splendens) was also mentioned as a nuisance species.

* Link source: Encyclopedia Britannica, which provides free web access to the ISW.

New Arrivals

Some interesting emails have been coming in from the USGS NAS Alert System:

• Red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) found in a pond near the University of Hawaii, the first record of the species in Hawaii in 10 years.
• A second Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) has been found in Lake Superior.
• Giant barnacles (Megabalanus coccopoma) were discovered in South Carolina, bringing the total number of states where the barnacle has been found to five (the USGS database says four but my notes say it has been spotted in Texas too).
• The NAS Alert System recently added plants to their list of organism types. If you've already registered with the system and you want to receive the plant alerts, you need to login and check the Plants box. The first two alerts were for variable watermilfoil (Myriophyllum heterophyllum). Looks like it has hit the West Coast of the US, with both Washington and Oregon reporting it (Washington in 2003).

They Make Great Pets Pests?

Japanese pet-owners are apparently having a hard time adjusting to the country's new Invasive Alien Species Law, set to go into effect this June. According to this report from Daily Yomiuri, owners of snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) are frantically searching for places to bring their turtles once owning them without a permit becomes illegal. Pet snapping turtles? Yikes. There's a reason for that common name. Hopefully this new law will not backfire by leading to massive releases of non-native turtles into the wild.

Slip Sliding Away in Australia

It's hard for me to think of the red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta) - cute but water-polluting pet, native American turtle - as an invasive species. But the ISW has already featured stories about the problems this species is causing in Asia. Now there's this story from Australia's National Nine News, and they actually refer to the sliders as "cane toad-like" turtles (that is not a compliment). Seems the turtles, introduced as pets to the continent about a decade ago, were accidentally/intentionally released and have since become established in the wild. Wildlife officials have been trapping the creatures and note that their range is expanding.

Made in Japan

Last month Japan came out with the country's first official list of invasive species. Problem (for me anyway) was that although there were some English-language articles about the list, there were no sources that actually included the list itself. Thanks to the magic of email and the ugliness of HTML-rendered Excel, I now bring you the official list of invasive species in Japan:

Mammalia:	Mammals:
Macaca cyclopis	Formosan rock macaque
Macaca fascicularis	long-tailed macaque
Macaca mulatta	rhesus monkey
Procyon lotor	Northern raccoon
Procyon cancrivorus	crab-eating raccoon
Herpestes javanicus	Indian mongoose
Callosciurus erythraeus	Pallas squirrel
Sciurus carolinensis	Eastern grey squirrel
Myocastor coypus	nutria
Trichosurus vulpecula	brushtail possum
Muntiacus reevesi	Muntjac deer
Aves:	Birds:
Garrulax canorus	hwamei
Garrulax perspicillatus	masked laughingthrush
Garrulax sannio	white-browed laughingthrush
Leiothrix lutea	red-billed leiothrix
Reptilia:	Reptiles:
Chelydra serpentina	snapping turtle
Anolis carolinensis	green anole
Anolis sagrei	brown anole
Boiga irregularis	brown tree snake
Elaphe taeniura friesi	Taiwan beauty snake
Protobothrops mucrosquamatus	Taiwan habu snake
Amphibia:	Amphibians:
Bufo marinus	cane toad
Pisces:	Fish:
Micropterus dolomieu	smallmouth bass
Lepomis macrochirus	bluegill
Ictalurus punctatus	channel catfish
Insecta:	Insects:
Solenopsis invicta	red imported fire ant
Solenopsis geminata	fire ant
Linepithema humile	Argentine ant
Invertebrata:	Arachnids:
Latrodectus hasseltii	redback spider
Latrodectus geometricus	brown widow spider
Latrodectus tredecimguttatus	black widow spider
Latrodectus mactans	black widow spider
Loxosceles - 2 species	recluse/violin spiders
Dipluridae - 2 genera	giant spiders
Buthidae - all species	scorpions
Tracheophyta:	Aquatic plants:
Alternanthera philoxeroides	alligator weed
Hydrocotyle ranunculoides	floating pennywort
Gymnocoronis spilanthoides	Senegal tea

(Thanks to T. Yoshioka for being so kind as to provide me with the list of scientific names.)

Cold Turtle Soup?

As reported by VNANet.com, Biologists in Viet Nam were alarmed to discover red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta) last week in Hoan Kiem Lake. The turtles, native to America, join eight other turtle species in the lake - 5 of which were introduced by people. Earlier this year, the government made plans to dredge the lake, in an effort to deepen the lake and provide a larger, cleaner turtle habitat. Bonus points to the Vietnam News Agency for using the turtle's scientific name.

Slip and Sliders

From The Korea Times comes this report on the invasion of the American red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans) in Korea. The turtles were imported into Korea from the late 1970s until they were banned in 2001. By that time over 6 million of them had been brought in to the country, first as part of a religious ritual (see this previous blog entry for a similar story from Hong Kong) and later as pets. They are now taking over many freshwater habitats, where they consume massive quantities of plant material over their 20-year life span. The article also briefly discusses other invasive species in Korea, the majority of them from America.

Thanks to a member of the ALIENS-L listserver for posting a link to this story. The importation of red-eared sliders is also banned in Europe.