Lock up your tortoises

Press, 22 May 1986, Page 14

Lock up your tortoises

From ROBIN CHARTERIS in London

There is “fast money” in stolen tortoises in Britain — and owners are being urged to protect their pets with burgler alarms.

Prices of up to $412.50 are being obtained on the black market since Britain banned the importation of tortoises two years ago. The slow-moving creatures ire not hard to catch, admits the chairwoman of the Midlands branch of the British Chelonia Group, Mrs Diana Pursall, of Birmingham. She has had one stolen and knows of many other thefts.

Like many others of the group which was set up to protect tortoises, she has an electronic beam alarm system in her garden safeguarding her colony of seven adults and two babies.

More owners should do that, she says, because a flourishing black market exists. “We have heard stories of people who have paid hundreds of pounds for tortoises which have then died within weeks. The new owners have no comeback because the trade is illegal,” Mrs Purcell adds.