Huo cheng National Park

Restting in the Huocheng County,the northwest of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Huocheng National Park is surrounded by low nountains on the three sides and is studded with rolling hills, gullies and valleys. An arid wilderness dotted with brooks and populated with sedges,the park offers a favorite habitat for the four-clawed land turtle.

Four-clawed land turtle, also called grassland turtle, normally lives on fertile grassland or on bleak and desolate desert. Named for the four claws on its front limbs, its yellow shell is speckled with black spots. With a black belly skirted with yellow, its head is adorned with symmetric scales. A small creature, it weighs 0.4 -1 kiolgram. Feeding on tender twigs, plant leaves and grasses, occasionally on barks of some shrubs, it has few items on its menu. Drought-tolerant, it almost never drinks water, taking in water required by its body only from the plants that it eats. It digs sandy holes of 2 meters long, where it spends most of the time of the year and then becomes sedentary in the dry and cold seasons.

It makes an appearance outside the hole only when it is warm enough and food supply abounds between June and August. It is, therefore, rarely seen on the ground. It is at its best in the warm seasons during which it gains much weight quickly. A well-known slow crawler who usually inches its way slowly, but it is so invigorated by the warm climate that it travels the longest distance in a year, covering 2,000 meters per day. Having finished feeding, it basks on sunlit rocks, raising its long, pointed head for a quick, spying glance for potential threat, being ready to retreat from any danger.

The warm seasons also serve as its breeding season, which of­fers an only chance for the male and female to get together and make mating, that is followed by a separation and solitude of the two sexes. Female turtle lays eggs for 2-3 times per year,2-5 eggs every time, in the nest of 10 -12 centimeters deep that it dug with its hind limbs in its selected nesting ground-a sunny and vegetationless area. The parental turtles are not responsible for incubation, relying on natu­ral hatching that brings baby turtles out of the shells in 65-82 days later if the eggs have not been snatched by marauders. Baby turtles enjoy no benefit of motherly protection and training for a time after they were born. The newly hatched turtles begin their lives alone. They must shift for themselves. Their lives, therefore, are fraught with hazards. A longevous creature, it enjoys longevity. It can live for over 100 years or even for hundreds of years though it does not become mature until it is 10-years-old and it grows up slowly.

An extremely gentle and friendly animal, £our-clawed land turtle never attacks any animals and humans. Equipped with no any defensive weapon, four-clawed land turtle faces a precarious life. When it is attacked, the only way for self-defence is an immedi­ate retreat of its head into its hard shell though this tactic will not help it when it falls into the hands of its predators. It then remains silent and motionless without knowing what will happen to it, a di­saster or a lucky escape. Consequently; the poor creature is a prey of a great number of wild beasts and even some birds of prey. Its baby turtles suffer the most frequent attacks and are vulnerable to vic­tims of their predators.

Highly adaptable to desert, this kind of turtle enriches the spe­cies of land turtles and has great scientific value in the research into desert ecology, particularly desert wildlife and their habitats. Its shell is a good medicinal material for some diseases. A turtle species found in China's desert, the four-clawed land turtle here in this park is a valuable and rare wildlife under state protection.