If You Want to Save the Turtle, Eat the Turtle

By Yolarnie Amepou

Papua New Guinea's only freshwater turtle scientist, Yolarnie Amepou; pictured here in 2014 with another of Papua New Guinea’s 12 freshwater turtles, scientific name: Elseya rhodini.

Turtles are often portrayed as gentle, solitary creatures, gliding through the ocean or basking quietly on distant beaches, separate from people. In these stories, any human interaction is seen as intrusion, and taking one for food as harm. These were not our stories, yet over time we allowed these outside narratives to shape how we saw ourselves and our relationship with turtles. We began to believe our ancestral practices were a problem and that stepping back was the only way to protect them. Slowly, this distance severed the living ties of responsibility and reciprocity that had long connected us to turtles, and with it, part of our memory of who we are.

I first came to understand this relationship working with the freshwater pig-nosed turtle along the 445 km Kikori River in southern Papua New Guinea, from its fast mountain headwaters to the slow meandering delta. The river and its tributaries connect 11 language-speaking tribes, each representing a living, adapting, and vast ancient knowledge system. Each tribe has its own names, stories, and protocols for turtles. In some coastal villages, light-skinned, grey-green-eyed members were forbidden from stepping on sandbanks, or turtles would abandon them.

2014. Working upriver Kikori on sandbanks with the custodians of this land, young people monitoring and measuring pig-nosed turtle nests during their nesting season. 

Mothers with babies who had not yet crawled could not eat turtles, or their child might never walk. Along a certain river I once traversed, turtles were named according to size, with taboos on the larger ones: speaking of them, harming them, or disturbing their habitat—their place—would bring thunderstorms and floods. The turtle is revered, feared, and respected in a relationship of reciprocity. Turtles are not simply meat. They are kin, messengers, and guardians, shaping ways of knowing and living. Our food systems are bound by restriction and discipline. Turtles are not simply meat. They are kin, messengers, and guardians, shaping ways of knowing and living. Our food systems are bound by restriction and discipline.

In the pig-nosed turtle nesting season of 2014 we ran hatching programs with our local schools. Teaching children about the biology of the pig-nosed turtle. Hatchlings will hatch in an environment of no oxygen as their trigger to hatch (usually during  a flooding event) where they can safely swim into the water without dashing for the river under the waiting eyes of predators like the monitor lizard and crocodiles.

Those whose clan ancestor—or totem—is an animal cannot eat that animal. Because my ancestor is a marine turtle, I cannot eat her. Yet within these knowledge systems, even if I cannot eat her, I may still serve her to my elders according to protocol.

These responsibilities are not punishments—they are the foundations of food sovereignty, keeping relationships reciprocal, regenerative, and community-centered, ensuring that both turtles and our cultures survive together.

Learning my story, and the stories of the Kikori River peoples, deepened my understanding of food systems and sovereignty. Food sovereignty is more than having food—it is the right to define our own food systems, to grow, harvest, prepare, and share in ways that honour our ancestors and sustain our communities.

Food sovereignty is more than having food—it is the right to define our own food systems, to grow, harvest, prepare, and share in ways that honour our ancestors and sustain our communities.

Pig-nosed turtle hatchlings hatched in February 2024 by custodians of Rumu Tribe land in Kikori who protected over 10 nests until successful hatching.

A turtle presented as a meal is an act of care and value, of respect and reciprocity, of relationships that extend beyond this moment and into generations. A turtle prepared and shared according to custom is a promise: to feed, to honor, to remember. To stop eating the turtle is to lose our relationship with it. It severs the connection between the turtle and the well-being of our communities—the very heart of our purpose. When these relationships are forgotten, we forget that our role as guardians is shared. The animals guard and protect alongside us. The river life of Kikori—the pig-nosed turtle, the fish, the crabs—feeds us and also activates protocols of respect, reciprocity, and community well-being.

The freshwater pig-nosed turtle also known as Piku in the Rumu language, is Papua New Guinea’s second largest freshwater turtle and one of 12 freshwater turtles in country. Papua New Guinea has 18 turtles, 6 species are marine turtles.

To save the turtle, you must eat the turtle—but not in the way markets or outsiders imagine. Our cultures did not write the importance of nature in books; we lived it. Through the way we feast, the food we prepare, and the care in how we share it, we walk as ancestral memory. We fulfil our obligations as guardians of the places we are part of. And in my case—if I am the turtle and the turtle is me—then who has more right to fight for its survival than the turtle herself?

And in my case—if I am the turtle and the turtle is me—then who has more right to fight for its survival than the turtle herself?

This is food sovereignty. This is self-determination. This is how we save the turtle, and in doing so, how we remember who we are—Guardians of Place, Guardians of the Blue Continent.

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About the collaborator

Yolarnie Kamuk Amepou is the Director and Co‑Founder of the Piku Biodiversity Network (PBN), a community‑based NGO serving the peoples of the Kikori River Delta in southern Papua New Guinea. Piku is the Rumu language name for the pig‑nosed turtle—an emblem of Yolarnie’s life’s work as Papua New Guinea’s only freshwater turtle scientist.

She hails from the riverlands of the Mekeo Tribe, Egefa Village in Central Province, and the mountainous Tangu Village of the Sangumaar Tribe in Madang Province. Yolarnie is related to Kiu, the marine turtle, through her maternal grandfather whose ancestry is tied to the sea. Kiu’s name means “a Promise that cannot be broken,” and Yolarnie carries this ancestral memory into her work, bridging traditional knowledge with science to protect riverine and coastal species.

Through PBN, she leads species conservation projects for 45 sharks and rays, two inshore river dolphins, four freshwater turtles, and two marine turtles, while advancing biocultural initiatives and supporting community‑led conservation in one of Papua New Guinea’s most ecologically and culturally significant regions.