THE THREATENED SPECIES OF INDONESIAN TORTOISES, TERRAPINS AND TURTLES

摘要

The tortoises, terrapins and turtles together comprise the order Chelonia, one of the most ancient, distinctive and familiar of all reptile groups. According to Jetkins (1995) modern classification systems divide the order into 12 families and around 257 species. Chelonians occur extremely widely in tropical and temperate regions of the world, including all the major oceans. The Southeast Asian region has a rich and variate Chelonian fauna. Excluding the marine turtles in the families Cheloniidae and Dermochelidae which are not considered in this report, there are the least 44 species in six families present, of which 17 species are found in Indonesia. In Papua (Man Jaya) there are several species which zoogeographically represent the Australian region.