Tracking the Illegal Trade in Papua’s Pig-Nosed Turtles

The diesel engine thrummed as our narrow, fiberglass boat pulled away from a small pier in Agats District, Asmat Regency, South Papua, Indonesia and began to move upstream to the Vriendschap River. Our provisions for the next six days—rice, eggs, canned food, water and kitchen utensils—were packed under a tarpaulin, in case of rain.

It was 10am on September 16, 2024. We had been told that it would take eight hours to reach our first destination—a village called Buetkwar, where we hoped to find people who harvest the eggs of endangered pig-nosed turtles (Carettochelys insculpta).

The vegetation crowding the river’s banks included pandan and merbau trees, rattan vines and old sago palms, in whose hollow stems parrots called black-capped lories made their nests. Perching in the tree branches and crossing the river from every direction were dozens of birds of various species, including coconut lorikeets, crowned pigeons and sulphur-crested cockatoos. The loud wingbeats of a Papuan hornbill following us sounded like a helicopter’s rotor blades. These bird species are often victims of wildlife smugglers—just like the pig-nosed turtles we sought.

The turtles have been part of local people’s diets for generations. Today, international demand for the animals as exotic pets, delicacies or traditional medicines is fueling illegal trade. Two or three times a year, the turtles are seized in airports and harbors as victims of smuggling, instead of swimming free in rivers, swamps, and lagoons—their natural habitats.

We wanted to understand the supply chains linking Papuan hinterlands with countries across Asia, Europe and North America, and explore the potential for sustainable, legal trade that benefits local communities while preserving turtle numbers.

Just before sunset, we spotted the red-and-white gate of Buetkwar Village. The rhythmic chugging of our engine attracted its residents and, one by one, they approached our moored boat.

The villagers talk

We conveyed the purpose of our visit to Isak Basik-Basik (40), the head of the village, who welcomed us in his home. Later that evening, at least 13 men gathered on the porch of a pastor’s house to talk with us about pig-nosed turtles.

Until recently, some villagers had used the species only for their sustenance, consuming both the eggs and the turtles. Then, around 2006, Indonesians from outside Papua began to come to their village to buy the eggs.

“Eventually, locals started to search for the eggs [for trade],” said Isak. “They suddenly got easy money.”

Some years later, the buyers were paying 1.3 US dollars per egg. In one night, a group of locals could dig out 60 nests from the sandbars in river bends where the turtles laid their eggs. Each nest has 20 to 30 eggs. So, if they were lucky, the egg collectors could each earn almost 200 US dollars from just one night’s work. Easy money indeed.

But, in 2023, the price dropped dramatically—to just above 30 cents. The men took turns to speak:

“We don’t know why the price fell down.”

“Maybe the buyers tricked us.”

“We once bargained for 60 cents [per egg], but they refused.”

The men told us they have no control over the price of goods they sell. That power resides in the hands of the buyers, middlemen who will relay the eggs to the next, bigger buyers. And after they hand the eggs to the middlemen, locals said they have no idea where or to whom the eggs are then sold.

An unequal trade

The middlemen open shops to sell locals daily necessities, including foodstuffs, and to buy any goods their customers offer. They are mainly interested in fragrant agarwood, which is highly sought in international markets as a perfume ingredient. But they also buy many other things, including turtle eggs, hatchlings of arowana fish (locally called koloso), and even crocodile skins.

Faintly and hesitantly, one of the gathered men named two middlemen, adding: “They hatch the eggs.”

By selling the turtles that they hatch, the middlemen can easily earn three times more than what they paid for the eggs. But their buyers make even bigger profits. We found a pig-nosed turtle advertised online with a price tag of 2,850 euros—800 times more than what middlemen are paid for hatchlings, and 9,000 times more than the cash locals receive for an egg.

Egg collecting also carries a cost, as the turtles’ nesting grounds are far from the village. To get there, the locals must use a boat with a diesel engine. They need 20 to 60 liters of fuel, which costs 1.3 US dollars per liter, double its price in other parts of Indonesia.

“Sometimes the cash we bring is not enough to buy the fuel, so we have to row back to the village,” said one of the men.

The low price is not the only deterrent to egg collecting. The residents of Buetkwar know that the pig-nosed turtle is a protected species. Under Indonesian law, it is forbidden to hunt, catch, kill, transport, or trade such species, whether alive or dead.

When we asked the group if any of them were still collecting eggs, the circle fell awkwardly silent.

The buyers disappear

From Buetkwar we moved to a river intersection in Yahukimo Regency, Asmat’s northern neighbor. There we found some bevaks, temporary houses that local people build when they need to spend extended periods away from home while searching for tradable goods, such as agarwood or turtle eggs.

We had come looking for Nanang, one of the middlemen that the men in Buetkwar mentioned. We found him relaxing on his bevak, a modest wooden house that he also used as a shop. 

Nanang (60) lives with his wife, Wati (56) and a four-year-old foster son. He had migrated to Asmat from Palopo, South Sulawesi in 2000, and Wati followed three years later. While Nanang had intended to trade wood, especially agarwood, he eventually got involved in the turtle eggs trade.

He and Wati reminisced about the time, around 2015-2016, when they could sell a turtle they had hatched for almost 4 US dollars. In turn, they had offered local egg collectors 1.6 US dollars per egg. But in 2019, Nanang’s buyers suddenly disappeared, forcing him to release nearly 5,000 turtles he had hatched.

It may be a coincidence, but around this time—on March 15, 2019—officials in Merauke Port seized 2,227 pig-nosed turtles that had been smuggled among the cargo of a ferry that sailed from Asmat. A stevedore named Hendra Weinner Wateriri was found guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison, and either a fine of 130 US dollars or two more months of prison time.

Hendra’s Facebook page, which was last updated in 2013, shows him in the uniform of the Indonesian army. The page has photos of a pig-nosed turtle hatchling and captured wild birds, including protected species.

The middleman’s dilemma

With Nanang’s buyers gone, he had to reduce the price he paid locals for eggs.

“Today, it is only 10,000 rupiahs [60 cents],” he said, with Wati adding that the price in 2023 was just 30 cents.

That night, we slept in the couple’s other bevak—a makeshift cabin with walls and shingles made from sago bark and leaves. As we sheltered from the heavy rain, we felt sure that turtles would not lay their eggs and the locals would not seek them—the villagers in Buetkwar had told us that turtles will not come ashore to lay their eggs in the rain.

The next morning, Nanang confirmed that nobody had offered eggs for sale.

“But to be honest with you, I prefer that they don’t bring [eggs],” he said. “The problem is, we don’t know how much we can sell right now.”

Nanang started this year’s breeding season with a heated debate with locals. They demanded 90 cents per egg, a price Nanang could not provide because he still did not know whether there would be any buyer. As a compromise, they agreed on 60 cents per egg.

Wati showed us a bucket containing around 60 eggs that they bought from locals around two days prior.

“Here’s the dilemma,” said Nanang. “We pity the locals if we reject their eggs. But, if we buy them and try to sell them, there’s a risk of being caught by authorities.”

Mul, another middleman living near Nanang’s bevak, showed us his hatchery. The sand-filled wooden box contained around 300 neatly packed pig-nosed turtle eggs that he had bought from local people. In another room, he showed us dozens of New Guinea red-bellied short-necked turtles, another species he trades.

Mul entered the turtle business in 2006. He initially sold to a person named Andre in Jakarta, but around four years ago he had to reroute his trade network. When we mentioned the 2019 smuggling case, Mul burst into laughter. “Those were my [hatchlings] they seized!”

Company connections

Unlike the other middlemen we met, Mul said he now had a connection to a company trading legally. This is possible because, although the pig-nosed turtle is a protected species, in 2021 the Minister of Environment and Forestry issued a Decree that designated it as a game animal.

Under this designation, the government allows a quota of 10,000 eggs to be collected in Mimika and Asmat Regencies and ranched legally by a company called CV Alam Nusantara, based in Timika, Central Papua. Under the terms of its license, the company must release half of the turtles it hatches to restock the wild population.

A Google search for CV Alam Nusantara returns little, other than a news article from August 2024. It reported that the company released to the wild 4,605 pig-nosed turtle hatchlings it had ranched over the previous three years. The company’s director is Danny Gunalen, a zoo owner, animal breeder and wildlife trader.

Mul could not remember the name of the company he supplied, but said its turtle buyer was called Edy. He said: “Last year I sent all [hatchlings] to Edy.”

Although Mul claimed to be operating legally, the only company licensed to ranch pig-nosed turtles—CV Alam Nusantara—has no permit to buy hatchlings.

Mul also said he did not dare send his hatchlings on big vessels. Instead, the shipments were only done by speedboat, often in the dead of night.

“Sometimes we leave Agats at 2am and enter Timika at 4am,” he said.

The egg trade’s origin

Before we left Mul’s bevak, two local people arrived with a big, black bucket containing dozens of turtle eggs they had just acquired. Despite the previous night’s rain, turtles had evidently nested on some of the sandbars. We travelled to see them and saw turtle tracks in the sand. By following the trails, we could easily find the nests. 

During our trip to observe the sandbars, we saw five bevaks on the river’s west bank. Their occupants were families from Bor Village who had come to collect eggs. Some families would reside in these bevaks for months, until the breeding season ended.

Every morning around 3am to 4am—if the sky is clear—the families get ready to commute to the nesting ground. They sell the eggs they gather to Nanang and Mul, among others. They also mentioned traders from Agats who come on a speedboat and take eggs away to Timika, Merauke or Jakarta.

For the villagers, egg-gathering was a mundane routine that they had practiced since they were as young as nine-years-old. But, back then, the eggs were only for eating. Like the locals of Buetkwar, they said buyers started to come in the early 2000s.

“Policemen,” they said. Nanang and Mul had told us the same information: it was police officers who had first opened the trade door. All of them mentioned the same name: Hermawan.

“The first time was 2006,” said one of the villagers from Bor. “I still hunted crocodiles back then. But suddenly, Hermawan came here with some other policemen, asking whether there were any eggs.”

Hermawan offered 1.3 US dollars per egg, four times the price locals could previously get. Afterwards, everybody was looking for eggs.

“In the past, it was mostly eaten, [but] now there are buyers,” they said.

A path home

Despite the actions of some rogue personnel, Indonesia’s law enforcement agencies have had some success at deterring illegal trade in pig-nosed turtles and their eggs, making purchasers much more cautious and bringing down the eggs’ price.

Over the past 10 years, Indonesian officials seized almost 40,000 trafficked hatchlings—mostly outside of Papua. That is more than six times greater than the number of pig-nosed turtles legally exported from Indonesia in the same period, as reported under the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species.

Most seizures and related arrests happen in airports (42% of all cases), when officials find the animals packed inside luggage, styrofoam boxes or plastic containers. Turtles have also been seized in buyers’ houses, in Papua and beyond.

Seized turtles have a long path to freedom. First, they will be transferred to the nearest Natural Resource Conservation Center office, where they will stay until they can be returned to Papua.

Before being flown back, each turtle needs a health certificate from the local Quarantine Office. During the transfer, they are stored in containers designed to ensure adequate temperature, humidity and airflow. Thought goes into their diet too.

“We should know, what did the animal usually eat before?” said Bambang H. Lakuy, the head of conservation for Timika Region II at the Papua Natural Resource Conservation Center. “We should adjust to it, while slowly trying to change their feeding behavior to its natural state. It requires a lot of energy and cost.”

Bambang said that because of limited budgets, translocations often take place in phases. In 2023, for instance, the government translocated 500 turtles from Bali in nine phases. Some of the turtles had grown to 15 to 20 centimeters in diameter, said Bambang, adding that the total cost of relocating them was almost 200 million rupiahs (around 13,000 US dollars).

The turtles are finally released at sites with suitable habitat, food and safety from human interventions. Mimika Regency is where most releases occur, said Bambang, because local people’s traditional laws forbid the extraction of resources in some designated areas.

Bambang said: “[I told them] I am glad, they already have a conservation spirit rooted in them.”

Livelihoods and conservation

Richard Gatot Triantoro of the Forestry Service of West Papua Province, is a prominent researcher of the pig-nosed turtle. Research that he co-authored in 2017, with a case study in the Vriendschap River, found that the intensity of egg hunting in Asmat Regency reaches 100%, meaning that every single nest identified in the research had been dug out by local people.

During Gatot’s research in four regencies—Asmat, Kaimana, Merauke, and Boven Digoel—during 2012-2019, he frequently heard locals claim that the supply of eggs was seemingly ever-abundant, no matter how many they took. We heard the same several times during our fieldwork. Yet, Gatot is skeptical.

He points out that turtles produce fewer eggs as they age and that longer-term data is needed to understand true patterns of abundance. On top of that, there are still many uncounted parameters that limit our knowledge about the turtles’ survivability rate: how many are naturally hatched, avoid predators and grow to adulthood.

Gatot explained that the natural conditions of the swamp and its climate provide some protection to the eggs. It happens every rainy season—just as we observed. Sometimes, the night is clear during the nesting time, but rain pours afterwards, washing every track from the sandbars. With the footprints gone, locals can only harvest a small number of eggs, if any.

Considering the complex dynamics of pig-nosed turtle trade, Gatot argued that the use of the turtles—as an integral part of conservation efforts—should first and foremost be for locals’ livelihoods, because the residents of Asmat rely heavily on natural resources for their daily needs.

To ensure this, Gatot proposed raising the price of the eggs and hatchlings to four to five times the current price. He said that, along with constant monitoring and education from the government, this would allow local people to gain similar profits while limiting the number of eggs they collected.

“The large distributors in Jakarta—if they want to do the trade—would have to buy straight from locals of Asmat, or Boven Digoel, or Kaimana,” said Gatot. “On the other hand, locals could establish a cooperative unit or a village-owned business entity.”

Significant consequences of this scheme, said Gatot, are that there would be no room for middlemen to trade the turtles and no price manipulation from bigger buyers.

Community benefits

In Gatot’s vision, the local communities should fully benefit from the natural resources of their land, instead of being left in a vulnerable position. And the turtles, with their limited habitat range, must continue to thrive.

The villagers we spoke to also want to be able to benefit more from the pig-nosed turtles they live alongside. The locals of Bor told us they would like to hatch their own turtles, inspired by the success of one man in their village who hatched 1,000 eggs that he later sold to traders from Agats.

In Buetkwar, the shrinking price for eggs has forced the villages to focus on searching for agarwood. But finding it is harder than collecting eggs. They must literally dive into deep bogs to search for the dead wood. If they got lucky, they could make 1,600 USD in a day. On the other hand, locals sometimes had to survive for months straight without finding even a single shard of wood.

“There is no other job besides this,” said Isak Basik-Basik, the village head. “Agarwood is our only means to survive.”

“Hopefully there would be a permit directly granted to locals for the use of the turtles, so that our livelihood does not rely solely on agarwood,” said Isak. “During the breeding season, we hope we can safely collect the eggs and gain benefits from it.”

Postscript: In December 2024, about one month after the completion of this article, the Police Department of Asmat seized a massive number of pig-nosed turtle eggs and hatchlings in the Agats District. One suspect, identified by the initials MKP, was arrested at his residence on December 13 with hatcheries containing approximately 9,000 eggs, 1,809 of which had hatched by the time they were seized. The following day, another suspect, R, who is unrelated to MKP, was arrested with approximately 10,000 eggs, 1,385 of which had hatched.

MKP is a repeat offender. In January 2024, he was arrested with 1,192 live hatchlings and several protected bird species. He was sentenced to eight months in prison and fined 10 million rupiah (around 620 US dollars), with the alternative of serving one additional month in prison. Just about three months after his release, he was arrested again for a similar offense.

This story was produced with support from Internews' Earth Journalism Network. An Indonesian version will be published by Garda Animalia in 2025.

Banner image: Pig-nosed turtle hatchlings released on a sandbar, their natural nesting ground / Credit: Fikri Al Mubarok.