Sick Malaysian wild terrapins saved by social media SOS

Thanks to helping hands online, several Tuntung, like this one, have survived.

When the pandemic led to the movement control order (MCO), few of us conceived how long it would continue or what kind of impact it would have. For a batch of rare wild Malaysian terrapins, locally known as Tuntung, it brought sickness and danger.

“Our Tuntung are river terrapins, they can’t go in the sea,” Dr Chen Pelf Nyok, co-founder of the Turtle Conservation Society of Malaysia, explains. “Locally they are found in just three states: Kedah, Perak and Terengganu.”