Special thanks to Matt Vincent of the Melbourne Zoo for his assistance on the project during a visit in November. He provided the TCEP with badly needed incubation boxes, equipment, and supplies for hatching turtle eggs. Matt also helped out for a week, including getting his hands dirty processing 118 kg of Indotestudo elongata from a Thanh Hoa trade seizure.
     Matt’s trip to Vietnam followed a visit to the Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden in Hong Kong, and a brief tour of markets in southern China with Michael Lau, where Matt got a chance to see the end of the road for much of the region’s wildlife.
     In the coming year, Matt will play an increasingly important role in helping coordinate Melbourne Zoo’s involvement with the TCEP.

The TCEP welcomes Rohan Holloway, an Australian turtle ecologist, who previously worked in Cambodia collecting data on the turtle trade. Rohan arrived in early September and assumed immediate responsibility for coordinating the captive rehabilitation and research components of the project, working with counterpart turtle ecologists Le Thien Duc and Nguyen The Cuong. Part of Rohan’s main duties will also be to help train park staff to manage the day-to-day operations of the center, as well as to develop a translocation program that will permit turtles to be released back into the wild following rehabilitation. Rohan’s arrival coincided with a significant increase in turtles confiscated from the trade by regional rangers, and much of his time has been involved in processing trade seizures. However, since Rohan’s arrival, the TCEP has also been able to carry out two major translocations of turtles back into the wild, including Indotestudo elongata at Cat Tien National Park, and Manouria impressa at Pu Mat Nature Reserve.