Tortuga Gazette 26(6): 7-8, June 1990

The plight of the Egyptian tortoise

by James Buskirk

The Egyptian tortoise, Testudo kleinmanni, is the smallest species of tortoise inhabiting the northern hemisphere. Once known as Leith's tortoise, its distribution is limited to a narrow range of coastal desert in the southeastern Mediterranean Basin from Libya to Israel. Nowhere occurring more than 90 km inland, the Egyptian tortoise is adapted to one of the driest habitats supporting chelonians on earth, some areas receiving as little as 50 mm of annual precipitation. This tiny tortoise is capable of excreting either uric acid or less concentrated urea as a metabolic adaptation to its extreme environment. Few other chelonian species are so adapted. Additionally, the Egyptian tortoise is active during the winter and prefers lower temperatures than the larger, somewhat similar and better known, spur-thighed tortoise, Testudo graeca. Egyptian tortoises typically utilize rodent burrows for shelter when not active on the surface but do not excavate their own burrows. In Israel, this species is known as tsav hayabasha' hamidbari' - the desert tortoise.

While desert monitor lizards and birds of prey, including ravens, are among its natural predators, T. kleinmanni is severely threatened by man and his activities. Habitat loss has fragmented populations throughout the range. Although ostensibly protected in Egypt, the tortoises are sold openly in Cairo pet shops. Specimens from a coastal nature reserve near Alexandria were offered for sale to the reptile curator of the Giza Zoo in 1984. A year later, shipments of several dozen specimens, mostly males, were legally exported from Egypt to western Europe and the United States. There has been high mortality among the exported tortoises and no reported captive breeding. Until the 1940's, T. kleinmanni was bred repeatedly at the Giza Zoo. Today, captives there languish from a "wasting disease" and are regularly replaced by freshly caught specimens from dwindling natural populations. There is no longer reproduction at the Giza Zoo.

In Libya, the status of the Egyptian tortoise is unclear. In 1984, German herpetologist H. H. Scleich found only 3 specimens in suitable habitat in Kouf National park.

Testudo kleinmanni was discovered in Israel in 1963 and has been the focus of an ecological study there for more than a decade. Inhabiting semi-stable dunes which it shares with a rich herpetofauna, the tortoise occurs in a handful of localities in the northern Negev Desert. The largest and best studied population inhabits Holot Agur (Agur Sands), an area about 400 sq km between Beersheba and the Egyptian Border.

For a number of years, it appeared inevitable that most of Holot Agur would be incorporated into the Israeli Nature Reserves Authority to safeguard this unique tortoise and other sand dune denizens. Unfortunately, there is political pressure in Israel both to build human settlements and to allow unrestricted grazing in the areas with thriving T. kleinmanni populations. The Nature Reserves Authority has suffered from cutbacks and political inertia. Only a handful of nomadic Bedouin, no longer dependent on transhumancy for their livelihood, would stand to benefit in the slightest from untrammeled grazing rights in Holot Agur. The effect of their herds on the desert wildlife is likely to be as disastrous as the construction of permanent human settlements.

EDITORS (MJC) NOTE: The printed version of this 1990 Tortuga Gazette article concludes with a plea for readers to write letters to the Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Nature Reserves Authority. Mr. Buskirk informs me that the latter no longer exists, and as this is no longer a timely subject requested that the addresses be excluded from the on-line version. The original text of the article accompanied a poster displayed at the 1990 Desert Tortoise Council Annual Symposium designed to encourage attendees to petition the Israeli government to set aside a reserve for T. kleinmanni.