A Mediterranean tortoise (Mauremys leprosa) was found about two weeks ago in the Sousa River, in Gondomar, in a space where you haven’t seen each other in four yearsrevealed this Wednesday to Lusa the producer of documentaries on nature Paulo Ferreira.
According to the specialist, it is “one of the two native species of tortoise” existing in Portugal and which, according to fossil data, “has inhabited the planet for approximately 120,000 years”, currently distributed throughout the Iberian Peninsula, the southwest of France and northwest Africa.
“In Portugal it is widely distributed and mostly in the interior of the country and south of the Tagus, while on the coast, from Mondego upwards, it is scarce and has occasional and scattered populations,” he adds.
Paulo Ferreira points out, therefore, “the official records of this species on the north coast can be counted on the fingers of one hand and because it is a rediscovery in the place, after four years of absence.”
The specimen found is a “female”, explained the specialist, who had the collaboration of the biologist Joel Neves to identify the turtle, which is normally found on the banks of rivers, “generally laying places, where it can lay up to 12 eggs in a little hole.
Underlining the “extreme importance” of the discovery, he explained to Lusa that this observation “highlights the need and urgency to conserve this reptile and the bodies of water where it livesthat are highly disturbed and threatened.
According to Paulo Ferreira, the species has a “non-threatened” status, but the “isolation of this possible population is an obstacle to its continuity and its future, since they are more vulnerable to local extinction and isolated individuals have greater difficulty in order to reproduce and leave offspring”, in addition to the fact that the presence of “invasive species” are “limiting factors for their survival”.
In this context, he warned, the regular presence of the Florida tortoise (Trachemys scripta) threatens the continuity of this native tortoise, since they compete directly for space and resources. In addition, morphological and physiological characteristics such as the fact that they reach sexual maturity much earlier, a higher fertility rate, their more general diet, and the fact that they are larger and more aggressive, facilitate their spread and rapid dominance, overlapping them. native species, causing their decline and even disappearance.
Other threats, he listed, are the Louisiana red crabs that “feed on their juveniles” and the artificialization of the banks, works of “engineering that affect the hydromorphology of the water lines, overexploitation of water resources, pollution and discharges of contaminants, as well as the tourist pressure on wetlands”.
Source: Observadora
