The importance of health screening before releasing animals

The Asian Turtle Program of Indo-Myanmar Conservation strives to carry out wild animal releases properly and correctly to the best of our abilities, physically and financially. This includes making sure that released animals are healthy and disease-free.

Over the past few years, we have been testing turtles for two main pathogens, Mycoplasma and Herpesvirus, in the hopes that we can identify infected individuals and prevent them taking the disease to the wild.

Additionally, we have also tested some wild populations to see how prevalent these diseases are in protected areas, and relate that to turtles from confiscations.

Healthy turtles have the best chance of survival and the least chance of harming wild populations. Photo credit: ATP/IMC

Check out a recently published paper on health-screening tortoises in Myanmar: https://bioone.org

Date: 22nd May 2020
Press release by: Jack Carney and Bich Kieu – ATP/IMC

Disease screening is an important part of the release process. Photo by: Hoang Van Ha – ATP/IMC

No comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *