Associated Press

Hanoi, Vietnam:

They’re calling him “the lucky royal turtle” — a rare and endangered reptile that was saved from a likely fate in a Chinese soup pot by keen-eyed wildlife officers and a microchip.

Poachers snatched the animal, a species called “Royal Turtle” in Cambodia because its eggs were once fed to kings, from a Cambodian river two months ago and toted it across the Vietnamese border on a motorbike with a stash of other, more common, turtles.

Conservationists said that at 33 pounds, the animal was sure to have fetched a good price when it reached the smuggler’s destination: The food markets of China, where turtle meat is a delicacy often made into soup. A raid on the smuggler’s house in southern Vietnam’s Tay Ninh province was the turtle’s first stroke of good luck. About 30 turtles were confiscated and transported to a wildlife inspection centre, where workers noticed there was something different about this one.

A photo confirmed it was a Batagur baska or Asian river terrapin, a species thought to have disappeared in Cambodia until it was rediscovered in 2001. Conservationists eventually began tagging the animals with tracking devices and monitoring their nests, and King Norodom Sihamoni personally ordered their protection. That led to the captured turtle’s next good fortune. When officials inspected it in Ho Chi Minh City, they found a tiny microchip implanted under its wrinkly skin, pinpointing its exact home on the Sre Ambel River in southern Cambodia.