Distribution
The Yangtze giant softshell turtle has been known to inhabit the Yangtze River and Lake Taihu, situated on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, in eastern China, and Gejiu, Yuanyang, Jianshui and Honghe in Yunnan Province in southern China.
The last known specimen caught in the wild in China was in 1998 in the Red River between Yuanyang and Jianshui; it was then released. Only four specimens are known to live in Vietnam and China, one each at Hoan Kiem Lake (taxonomy questioned) and Dong Mo Lake Son Tay in Hanoi, Vietnam, and two in Suzhou zoo in China.
A specimen at the Beijing Zoo died in 2005, and another one at the Shanghai Zoo died in 2006; both of them were caught at Gejiu in the 1970s.
In 1999, 2000, and 2005, turtles have re-emerged from Hoan Kiem Lake on special occasions, when it was seen by a large audience and caught on film. Only a single turtle is believed to be left in the lake. In April 2011, it was captured because it had open sores that needed to be treated.
Read more about this topic: Yangtze Giant Softshell Turtle
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“My topic for Army reunions ... this summer: How to prepare for war in time of peace. Not by fortifications, by navies, or by standing armies. But by policies which will add to the happiness and the comfort of all our people and which will tend to the distribution of intelligence [and] wealth equally among all. Our strength is a contented and intelligent community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)