Central Asian tortoise is endemic to the steppes and deserts of Central Asia. This specie is a threatened specie, i.e. at risk of extinction and humans are to blame for it. Tortoises often become victims of poaching, get stuck in trenches dug out by farmers around their fields. Few enthusiasts care about saving the Central Asian tortoises in Kazakhstan. They hope to draw attention to the issues of tortoises and preserve the population of species.
“Take the tortoise, it does not move”
The “Tasbaqa” Fund (from Kazakh translated as Tortoise) is the only environmental fund of Kazakhstan, which deals with preservation of steppe or Central Asian tortoises, which emerged in 2023. Tasbaqa operates in two towns: Almaty and Astana, but they save animals across Kazakhstan.
“It all started accidentally: my husband found a tortoise at one of the parks of Astana and brought it home,” Yulia Tsaugg, founder of the fund, said. “We started to read special literature to know how to create the right conditions for it, and we learned that it was very expensive, bothersome and many people, who take tortoises home, fail to make efforts to keep them and they just die slowly in apartments.”
Also, Yulia and her spouse learned that tortoises have many problems in wild life. They survive in extreme weather conditions and are an easy prey for many carnivores, and also the anthropogenic factor reduces their population.
According to Tsaugg, slow tortoises become an easy prey for poachers, who send them in large-scale contraband shipments abroad or sell them in Kazakhstan via websites as pets. Moreover, tortoise meat is used for soups, and tortoiseshells are used as jewellery boxes and ashtrays.
“Our fund’s activity depends on four women: me, Zarina, who is in charge of the biggest part of the rehabilitation centre near Almaty, Yelizaveta, who turned her house into a rehabilitation centre, and veterinarian Kseniya, who has a long-term experience of working with tortoises,” Yulia Tsaugg said.
In Astana, Tasbaqa has a veterinarian office, and specially equipped terraria. Sometimes, tortoises have to be delivered from Almaty to Astana, if the animal requires surgery or enteral feeding. Tortoises from all over Kazakhstan are brought to the fund when they get sick. “People call us and tell us: take the tortoise, it does not move,” Tsaugg said.
According to zoologists, the Central Asian tortoise plays an important role in the ecosystem of steppes, deserts and semi-deserts. It is an essential food link and it is in the diet of over 35 species, including critically endangered species. Moreover, tortoises always dig burrows, where many small animals save themselves during steppe fires.
“Back in the Soviet period, the Central Asian tortoise was considered to consume too much grass, which led to insufficient fodder for domestic animals. In fact, tortoises eat plants, which are toxic for livestock. And they decided to exterminate tortoises: they were bashed with rocks, fed to dogs, sold abroad,” Tsaugg said.
As a result, their population was reduced so that it could turn into an environmental disaster. Only in 2001 it was forbidden officially to capture them.
“Keeping a tortoise is a costly affair”
Almaty resident Yelizaveta Vituleva, one of four participants of the Tasbaqa fund (at the time of publication of the material, Vituleva no longer worked at the fund – Ed.), lives in a private house, where she has a kind of a zoo: a Rottweiler dog, a Maine Coon cat, a chicken, and many tortoises. Dozens of tortoises warm themselves under the bright ultraviolet lamp in a small wooden cage. These are ‘home pets’, i.e. tortoises, which people buy or pick in steppes as pets, and when they become annoying or get sick, they try to get rid of them as soon as possible.
“In fact, keeping a tortoise is a costly affair,” Vituleva said. “In addition to a big cage, they need big and expensive ultraviolet lamps, which need to be replaced every three months. The cage needs to have the same temperature. Tortoises must not be kept on a cold floor, in a box, or somewhere under a radiator: it means an absolute death for them.”
According to Vituleva, tortoises are not meant for apartments because they are noisy, dirty and stinky.
“They are noisy because they have a strong instinct of hole digging. They are dirty because they always need water, but if water bowl is placed inside the terrarium, tortoises will always overturn it. They need to be bathed every two-three days for at least 40-50 minutes. During bathing, water must be changed because once they get into water, they start to defecate, this is their instinct,” the girl said.
Also, tortoises need diverse diet, vitamins and minerals. The diet of a Central Asian tortoise in its natural environment consists of up to 180 species of plants. It is difficult to recreate this ‘menu’ in domestic conditions even for zoologists, not to speak of those who keep tortoises for fun.
“I was caring for it all winter,” Yelizaveta picks up a small tortoise from the box. “I doubted it could survive: it did not eat, drink, could not make to the food with its head because it was hard to be oriented in the area around it. It could be due to concussion. I fed it by hand: I literally put food into its mouth mornings and evenings.”
“We know many poachers by sight”
Together with Yelizaveta Vituleva we went to the steppe to release another batch of tortoises, which underwent a rehabilitation course and were ready to get back to the natural habitat.
Yelizaveta’s husband Vladimir helps her to save tortoises. The spouses load a box with reptiles into the trunk of their car and set off. On their way, Yelizaveta tells how they search for tortoises on websites with personal ads, where animals are sold not only by people who accidentally pick them in the steppes, but also poachers who are fully involved in this business. Central Asian tortoises are not listed on the Red List of Kazakhstan, so their sale or keeping within the country can lead only to a fine for poachers. If someone attempts to send tortoises abroad, in a large batch, it will lead to a criminal charge with further imprisonment.
“We know many poachers by sight and try to work with the police and environmental prosecutor’s office,” Yelizaveta said. “Minor poachers are those who picked the tortoise, brought it, played with it, and when the tortoise annoys him/her it will be sold. These tortoises, which we are going to set free today, got here accidentally: a young man called us and said he took it from children. He brought eight tortoises to us: seven males and one female.”
According to her, males possibly courted the female, walked around her and they were all picked from one place. A young man said that he walked into a pet shop, saw an ad of the Tasbaqa fund and decided to release the tortoises.
“He probably took the tortoises to the pet shop to sell them, but he saw our booklet, learned about the fine and decided to give us tortoises for free,” Yelizaveta said.
Tortoises should be released into a maximum solidary place so that they do not become victims of poachers or fall into another trench dug out by farmers. It is impossible to find such a place in Almaty so we went one hundred kilometres away from town.
The process of release of tortoises can hardly be called entertaining: animals are just picked from the box, put on the grass, and after a while, they accustom to the surroundings and start to disperse.
To protect tortoises from the repeated catch by poachers, Yelizaveta made red marks on their tortoiseshells: as if animals are being monitored by ecologists and their withdrawal from wild life is punishable.
Central Asian tortoises hibernate not only all winter long, but also all summer to avoid heat. Therefore, there are many tortoises in the steppe in April and May: they need to not only gain weight after winter sleep, but also lay eggs.
Once releasing all tortoises, Yelizaveta starts to look for new ones that need help. The girl finds several animals in thirty minutes. One tortoise has a broken tortoiseshell, where ants appeared already, and she needs to get rid of them. 
We are going back. Yelizaveta holds a tortoise in her hands (as it is safer and warmer) and tells about the perspectives of the fund. In April, Tasbaqa received its first grants: one for the project to protect tortoises from agricultural tranches, the second is educational one, when ecologists will give lectures to children, organise trips to the steppe, release tortoises. Tasbaqa employees believe it is most important to work with children. And not only because tortoises are caught mainly for giving a child a living toy, but also to form careful attitude to the nature from childhood.
Photos: Akhmet Isayev