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Dr. Anders Rhodin became sole Chair of the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group (TFTSG) in 2005 after serving as Co-Chair since 2000 with John Behler, who passed away in early 2006. Dr. Rhodin is an orthopedic surgeon as well as a turtle researcher and conservationist who has pursued two parallel professional careers. Born in Sweden and emigrated to the USA in 1958, where he received an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, an M.D. from the University of Michigan, and post-graduate orthopedic surgical residency training at Yale University, and has been in private surgical practice in central Massachusetts since 1982. In addition, Anders has been working on turtles since the early 1970s, including several years as an Associate in Herpetology at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, focusing primarily on chelid turtles.
He is the founding Director of Chelonian Research Foundation (CRF), a philanthropic nonprofit organization established in 1992 for the production, publication, and support of worldwide turtle and tortoise research—CRF administers an annual small-grants program for turtle conservation research that has distributed numerous grants to deserving biologists and conservationists working on endangered turtles and tortoises. Anders is also the founder, editor, and copublisher of Chelonian Conservation and Biology, the world’s premier peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing exclusively on turtles and tortoises. Finally, Anders is also Chair of the Turtle Conservation Fund, a funding and strategizing partnership between Conservation International, the TFTSG, and the Turtle Survival Alliance.
The TFTSG is in the process of renewing and expanding its membership and currently has about 150 registered members from over 30 nations, with many more pending. Foremost among the group’s priorities is the undertaking of a Global Turtle Assessment to update Red List status for all 300+ species of tortoises and freshwater turtles, the first such comprehensive review since 1996. This process is being led by Deputy Chair Peter Paul van Dijk. Several species have been reviewed already and have been updated on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, while many others are in the process of being evaluated through a series of Regional Status Workshops in conjunction with the Global Reptile Assessment being carried out under the auspices of the CABS Biodiversity Assessment Unit at Conservation International. The TFTSG also continues to be active in the CITES arena with on-going input into the advisability of additional listings on the Appendices. As the Asian turtle trade crisis of the last decade has come slowly under increasing control and some manageability, attention of the group is beginning to encompass the increasingly severe threats to chelonians from bushmeat trade and habitat loss in sub- Saharan Africa.
Also of importance for the international chelonian conservation community is the establishment of an annual venue and forum for the professional exchange of information, ideas, and networking. An annual chelonian conservation symposium will strengthen cohesiveness and community structure to help chelonian conservation grow as a field. The TFTSG and its Task Force, the IUCN Turtle Survival Alliance, Co-Chaired by Rick Hudson and Dwight Lawson, are working together to firmly establish such a forum, with the next annual symposium, now the 4th annual meeting, scheduled for August 10–13 in St. Louis, MO, USA.
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