On June 19th, 2015, Philippine officials raided a warehouse on Palawan and found thousands of turtles in cement tanks. More than 3,800 were endangered Palawan forest turtles, a species known only from the island and nearby Dumaran. The turtles were piled as many as a dozen deep, awaiting export. Some had ulcers on the undersides of their shells or open wounds on their feet; others had been bitten by turtles crowded in alongside them.
Sabine Schoppe organized the response. There was nowhere equipped to deal with thousands of turtles. Students were recruited to build shade and shelters, and a former crocodile enclosure was turned into an emergency pond. Schoppe and her colleagues worked around the clock, joined by veterinarians and turtle specialists who came from abroad. “Yesterday by sadness and work, now by hope,” she wrote after help began arriving.
She had arrived in the Philippines from Germany in 1995 after completing a doctorate in biology. She began with bird surveys and coastal resource management in the Visayas before moving to the State Polytechnic College of Palawan, now Western Philippines University, where she was a guest professor of aquatic and marine biology. She also became an associate editor of The Palawan Scientist.
The bakoko, as the Palawan forest turtle is known locally, was first described scientifically from specimens said to have come from Leyte. Those specimens were later destroyed during the bombing of Manila in World War II, and for decades scientists did not know where the turtle actually lived. It was eventually found in Palawan.
The species lives in creeks and small rivers beneath forest cover, spending daylight hours in burrows in the banks. Collectors can find those burrows and dig the turtles out, making them relatively easy targets. Keeping them healthy as pets is another matter. The animals are solitary and prone to stress, skin problems, and shell rot in captivity. Crowded together, they can attack one another.
Schoppe was a co-founder of the Katala Foundation. By the time of the turtle rescue, it had already helped the Philippine cockatoo recover through nest guarding and habitat protection with local involvement. She began its freshwater turtle program in 2007 and its pangolin program the following year. Under her leadership, the foundation established the first protected area specifically for the Palawan forest turtle and achieved the first successful conservation breeding of the species.
That preparation was critical after the raid in 2015. Katala and its partners had built a turtle rescue facility six years earlier in anticipation of confiscations. It was nowhere near large enough for what arrived. Some 2,200 turtles from the warehouse were released. More than 1,000 remained in care, suffering from ailments that included bone infections, eye problems, dehydration, and emaciation. More than 300 died in the first weeks.
Schoppe and her colleagues then followed released animals, building one of Asia’s few large-scale post-release monitoring programs for freshwater turtles. Schoppe received the Andrew Sabin Award for Excellence in Chelonian Conservation that year. In 2026, she was named the recipient of the Behler Turtle Conservation Award, the field’s highest honor. She was too ill to travel to Mexico to receive it; a longtime colleague from Palawan accepted it for her. She died less than six weeks later on September 13th. She was 63.
