Conservationists have discovered 49 nests of the rare Cantor’s Giant Softshell Turtles with 1,756 eggs on sandbars along the Mekong River in northeast Cambodia’s Kratie and Stung Treng provinces during the nesting season this year, a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) statement said on Saturday.
Although this was only two nests more than in the 2019 nesting season, the number of eggs was much higher than in recent years, the statement said, adding that as of Friday, 824 baby turtles hatched from 41 nests, of which 657 hatchlings were released into the wild, while the rest were under care for future release.
Cantor’s Giant Softshell Turtle is classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, it said. The species was thought to be extinct in the Cambodian portion of the Mekong River until its re-discovery in 2007 in a 48-km stretch of the river in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces.
In full: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-05/23/c_139082025.htm
