Reply to thread

All I'm going to say here is do NOT aim to breed any Murray river turtles or ANY river turtles in the Emydura complex, especially with the aim of supplying them to the captive pet trade. The Australian government in all its wisdom has abolished the recognition of all individual subspecies in the entire Emydura complex labelling them simply as "river turtles" this means that EVERYTHING from Macleay,, Hunter, Clarence, Sydney basin, Brisbane river, Cooper creek, Krefft's river, etc are all now just deemed "Murray River turtles" when they are NOT. This is why the genetic integrity of the entire Emydura complex has gone to $%&! and can never be undone... so many captive "Murray's" have been dumped into the wild thus snowballing this genetic disaster. If you're going to keep and breed turtles with the aim of supplying the pet trade, stick with Eastern long necks and nothing else. They are more suited to closed dam/pond environments, they are a lot smaller and are one of the most suited turtles for captivity whereas Murrays and all Emydura  are river divers and grow exceptionally large and are quickly seen as a burden by unsuspecting people who've purchased them, they get dumped and that's a huge problem. ELN naturally occur across QLD, SA, NSW and VIC.... they have the largest natural range of all Australian freshwater turtles, if  captive ELN get dumped into the wild, or inadvertently escape your pond/dam, they will cause no irreversible genetic damage to wild turtle populations.