{"id":523593,"date":"2026-06-07T20:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/523593\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T20:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:23:09","slug":"snapping-turtle-found-in-welsh-stream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/523593\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapping turtle found in Welsh stream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mr Newman said the turtle would probably end up in a zoo and he believed it had been deliberately released.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can only assume someone deliberately released her: they are not animals that easily escape. Turtles do not get out of enclosures easily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately quite a lot turtles get released in this country. It is completely illegal. The problem with snapping turtles is they are predators, they eat fish, newts and things like that. They can have an impact on the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added that they get three or four calls a year about snapping turtles with previous call-outs including Fluffy, an alligator snapping turtle, which was <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2024\/02\/10\/alligator-snapping-turtle-with-strong-bite-found-in-cumbria\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saved from a Cumbrian tarn<\/a> two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Evie Button, exotic pets expert at the RSPCA said: \u201cIt is illegal, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, to release non-native species such as snapping turtles, into the wild.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese animals have extremely powerful jaws and should never be handled by an inexperienced person so we would urge anyone who finds one in need of help (e.g. injured, trapped etc) not to approach it themselves but instead to contact the RSPCA or a local reptile expert who can help.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA snapping turtle is not a good choice of pet for an inexperienced reptile keeper; they need a lot of space and can be dangerous if handled incorrectly. Recreating their conditions \u2013 including environment, diet and behavioural requirements \u2013 can also be difficult and costly, and exotic pets often end up in our care, or others in the animal welfare sector, later down the line when people realise they\u2019re not easy to care for, or once the novelty wears off.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe would urge anyone thinking of getting an exotic animal as a pet to do lots of research first to ensure that it is the right pet for them and that they are able to meet all of its needs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr Newman said the turtle would probably end up in a zoo and he believed it had been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[273],"tags":[100,18,19,17,5,20535,133,1702,21794,14177,17331,461],"class_list":["post-523593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-reptiles","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-turtles","tag-uk-news","tag-wales","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116710696950622752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}