The world’s largest freshwater turtle and one of the most threatened species on Earth, the Yangtze giant soft-shelled turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) is doomed to near extinction after its last known female was laid dead in Vietnam.

The female turtle, which is about 1.5 meters long and weighs 93 kilograms, was found dead on the shore of Dong Mo Lake in Hanoi’s Son Tai district on April 21. The tortoise probably died a few days ago, but the cause of death is still unknown, Vietnamese news site VNExpress reported.

This particular female Yangtze giant tortoise was discovered in October 2020. Other female Yangtze giant tortoises were not known to exist at the time; The last known female of the species died in April 2019 after a failed attempt at artificial insemination at the Suzhou Zoo in China.

When the dead turtle was discovered last month, conservationists hoped it belonged to another unidentified female and that the known female might still be alive in the lake. But now experts have confirmed that this is not so.

“This is the same person we’ve seen for years,” Tim McCormack, director of the Asian Turtle Conservation Program in Indo-Myanmar, told TIME magazine. “This is a real blow.”

Currently, only two known males of R. swinhoei remain: one at the Suzhou Zoo and the other still living in Dong Mo Lake.

The researchers hoped that the male and female in Dong Mo Lake would eventually mate and produce a cluster of eggs. Judging by her height, the female was probably a few tens years old, so she was probably sexually mature.

“She was obviously a large female with a lot of reproductive capacity,” said McCormack. “It could potentially lay a hundred or more eggs a year.” However, the pair never mated, although the researchers built an artificial nesting beach in the lake so that the female could lay eggs if needed.

Yangtze giant softshell turtles, also known as Hoan Kiem turtles and Swinhoe softshell turtles, were once abundant in China’s Yangtze River and surrounding freshwater ecosystems such as Dong Mo Lake. However, historically, people hunted turtles for their meat and lost much of their natural habitat, according to the Asian Turtle Programme.

There is a possibility that other males and females will be found in the future. After all, this female had escaped detection for years. But unless another female is found in the wild, R. swinhoei will be the latest on the growing list of species exterminated by humans. Source