On June 17, 2015, Philippine officials confiscated thousands of turtles in cement tanks from a warehouse in Palawan, an island province in the Philippines. More than 3,800 of them were endangered Palawan forest turtles (Siebenrockiella leytensis), piled as many as a dozen deep, awaiting export. Some had ulcers on the undersides of their shells or open wounds on their feet; others had been bitten by turtles crowded in alongside them.
Sabine Schoppe organized the response. No facility was equipped to deal with thousands of turtles so students built shade and shelters. A former crocodile enclosure was turned into an emergency pond. Schoppe and her colleagues worked around the clock, joined by veterinarians and turtle specialists who came from abroad. “Yesterday by sadness and work, now by hope,” she wrote after help began arriving.
Schoppe had arrived in the Philippines from Germany in 1995 after completing a doctorate in biology. She began with bird surveys and coastal resource management in the Visayas before moving to the State Polytechnic College of Palawan, now Western Philippines University, where she was a guest professor of aquatic and marine biology. She also became an associate editor of The Palawan Scientist.
The bakoko, as the Palawan forest turtle is known locally, was first described scientifically from specimens said to have come from the Philippine island of Leyte. Those specimens were later destroyed during the bombing of Manila in World War II. For decades scientists didn’t know where the turtles lived until they were eventually found in Palawan.
The species lives in burrows alongside creeks and small rivers where collectors can dig them out making them relatively easy targets. Keeping them healthy as pets is another matter. The animals are solitary and prone to stress, skin problems and shell rot in captivity. Crowded together, they can attack one another.
Schoppe was a co-founder of the Philippines-based nonprofit Katala Foundation. She began its freshwater turtle program in 2007 and its pangolin program the following year. Under her leadership, the foundation built a turtle rescue facility and established the first protected area specifically for the Palawan forest turtle. They successfully bred the species for conservation.
That preparation was critical after the 2015 confiscation. Some 2,200 turtles from the warehouse were released, but more than 1,000 remained in care, suffering from ailments that included bone infections, eye problems, dehydration and emaciation. More than 300 died in the first weeks. Schoppe and her colleagues monitored released animals, building one of Asia’s few large-scale post-release monitoring programs for freshwater turtles.
Schoppe received the Andrew Sabin Award for Excellence in Chelonian Conservation in 2015. In 2026, she was named the recipient of the Behler Turtle Conservation Award, the field’s highest honor. She was too ill to travel to Mexico to receive it; a longtime colleague from Palawan accepted it for her. She died less than six weeks later on Sept. 13. She was 63.
Banner image: of Sabine Schoppe. Image courtesy of Katala Foundation.
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This story first appeared on Mongabay
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