Authorities in the southern Vietnamese province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau said Wednesday that they had confiscated dozens of taxidermied endangered turtles at a local shop.

Police officers found 72 stuffed turtles of various rare species, weighing a collective 47 kilograms, on display at a shell-craft shop in the province’s coastal city of Vung Tau.

The owner, who claimed to have no knowledge of the regulations on protecting endangered animals, says he collected the specimens over 20 years ago and had no certificates of their origin.

A customer first spotted and reported the turtles when they were being put into boxes at the shop’s warehouse.

The incident followed reports by Education for Nature – Vietnam (ENV), a nongovernmental organization for wildlife conservation and environmental protection, which claims the shop hung turtle shells on its walls, along its stairs, and on its façade.  

An investigation into the case is still underway.

ENV said although the five red-list turtle species present in Vietnam – the leatherback sea turtle, green turtle, hawksbill, loggerhead and olive ridley seat turtle – are protected at the highest level offered by domestic and international law, they are still gravely endangered by trafficking and illegal hunting.

The nonprofit organization said the use of taxidermy on wildlife for decoration inadvertently encourages the hunting and keeping of animals, hence damaging biodiversity and hampering wildlife protecting agencies.

A massive seizure of turtle shells belonging to highly threatened species took place in late 2014 in the south-central Vietnamese province of Khanh Hoa, leading to a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for the local man behind the crime.

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