History of the Red Eared Sliders

Red eared sliders live in ponds, streams, rivers and lakes. They prefer slow moving bodies of water with plenty of vegetation. They will spend the majority of there time underwater and basking in the sun. Sliders enjoy basking on logs, rocks, and slate near the water. Sometimes you will see sliders stacked on top of each other up to five high! The name “slider” refers to the quick retreat from their basking site into the water when they feel even the slightest bit threatened. Sliders will sleep at night underwater, usually resting on the bottom or floating near the surface, using their inflated throat as a flotation aid. Sliders become inactive at temperatures below 10°C. They will often hibernate underwater or under banks and hollow stumps. Emergence occurs in early March to late April.

[snip left2][/snip]The red eared slider has a History in the pet trade starting in the 1960’s. They were very abundant, easy to breed, and attractive turtles. Sliders, especially the red-eared, have been heavily collected for the pet trade and are sold by the millions in pet shops across the world. Because of unsanitary conditions and a lack of knowledge on turtle care, few survive for long in captivity. U.S. government regulations now require turtles to be at least 4 inches in length before they can be sold as pets in the USA. However, many hatchlings are still produced commercially for export to Europe, Mexico, and Japan where they are popular as pets .Commercial turtle farms rarely qualify as “closed systems,” and farm breeding stock is often augmented by the capture of wild turtles. In recent years, numbers of adult sliders and related turtle species have been trapped for the food trade; many have been exported to Asia. Native slider populations are declining due to habitat destruction and pollution as well as over harvesting. However, because of the release of unwanted pets, sliders have established populations outside of their native range. They have been found in California, France, South Africa, Bahrain, Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Thailand. These introduced populations may have some effect on native fauna and species, but to date there is little evidence supporting this. The biggest threat to sliders is Man. Not only are they exploited for the pet and food trade, but slider eggs are also used as fish bait. Sliders are often killed on roads by automobiles, and are sometimes persecuted by fishermen who mistakenly consider the turtles to be fish eaters.

A Turtle farm is a “Closed” operation that replenishes it’s stock entirely through captive breeding, while a ranch periodically brings in eggs or breeding adults from the wild. In practice, though the terms “Farm” and “ranch” are often used inter-changeably. Most turtle farms rely heavily on from adults collected from the wild to replenish the breeding stock. Though the hatchling red eared sliders “the standard breeding turtle” have been banned for sale since 1975 in the US….huge numbers are still farmed for export. In the 1980’s up to 100,000 red eared sliders were taken from the wild each year to supply farming operations in the united states, with a further 765,000 taken for direct export as food.

8 million farmed red eared slider hatchlings are exported to some 60 countries every year, it’s population at home may be declining.

Red Eared Slider imports into China reached 1,832,400 in 1997 from the United States. At least 182,000 were imported into Taiwan for the pet trade alone between 1994 and 1998; Taiwan now bans the imports of reptiles as pets….this is good thing.

Needless to say, red eared sliders have had it pretty rough. In order to counter this growing trend, please follow your local laws regarding red eared sliders.
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