Critically Endangered
Magdalena River turtle
Podocnemis lewyana
Magdalena River turtle is a turtle in the family Podocnemididae — Podocnemis lewyana, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Both males and females have a shell composed of shield-like plates that are primarily brown in color. Males have grayish-brown head scales, while females display head scales more reddish-brown in color.
Adult males, on average, weigh 1.6 kg and measure 24.6 cm in carapace length.
Range and habitat
The Magdalena River turtle or Rio Magdalena river turtle is a turtle in the family Podocnemididae, that diverged from other turtles in the Cretaceous Period, 100 million years ago. It is endemic to northern Colombia, where its home range consists of the Sinú, San Jorge, Cauca, and Magdalena river basins. The decline is attributed to habitat destruction, pollution, over-harvest, commercial exploitation, hydrological changes due to electrical generation facilities, and climate change.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Females nest in the sandy riverbanks that result from areas of shallow water. It is unclear if individual females nest during both seasons in the same year.
Higher egg counts are observed in the June–July nesting season. While average egg weight is significantly greater in the December–January nesting season.
In crisis
In less than 25 years, the species exhibited a population decline of over 80%. As of 2018, 37% of all freshwater and terrestrial turtle species found in Colombia were classified as "Threatened". Despite legislation passed in 1964 aimed at protecting these species (Ministry of Agriculture Resolution No. 0214-1964), their populations have continually decreased.
Even so, research efforts have been focused on finding more effective means on conservation, as understanding of the turtles' endangered nature is relatively novel.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Magdalena River turtle is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Magdalena River turtle, Wikidata item Q2699599. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
