In Mexico, world’s smallest turtle faces big threats from trafficking, habitat loss

It sounds like a scene out of the Ocean’s series of heist movies. Only this one didn’t happen in Las Vegas, but at a Mexican university campus surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. And it wasn’t about taking on a casino, but stealing valuable turtles. Armando Escobedo Galván, a biologist at Centro Universitario de la Costa (CUC) in Puerto Vallarta, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, says he’s still startled about how the thieves tricked him last December. “Two people arrived at my office,” he recounts, “wearing uniforms of the environmental prosecutor’s office,” a federal agency known as PROFEPA. They said they were there for an inspection of his turtle program, asked for his permits, and cited corresponding laws. Everything during the two-hour procedure seemed completely normal. Then they asked