News media framing of instances of illegal wildlife trade provides a window into understanding public perceptions of trade dynamics and potential support for conservation actions. Here, we used 54 known cases of illegal turtle trade in the United States occurring between 1998–2021 as a case study to investigate news media framing of illegal wildlife trade. We synthesized information from these cases and qualitatively analyzed how they were framed in 217 associated news articles. The 54 cases involved the illegal trade of at least 24,000 freshwater turtles of 34 different species; box turtles (Terrapene spp.) were traded the most. Of the known species involved, 23 were listed under one of the CITES Appendices, and 12 were considered threatened by the IUCN. Trade occurred in at least 43 US states and 6 countries. Despite the multifaceted nature of these cases, problem and solution framing was relatively unvarying. Media coverage framed foreign demand, particularly from Asia for high-value pet turtles, as a main driver of illegal trade. Solutions focused on regulations and enforcement which follow global trends in illegal wildlife trade discourses. However, we also found that articles neutralized illegal turtle trade in several ways, reflecting a lack of perceived legitimacy of and necessity for trade rules and enforcement. Without acknowledging longstanding and formerly legal practices in wildlife trading, conservation efforts which focus on regulations and enforcement may be undermined by a lack of normative compliance.

We first identified known instances of illegal trade in non-marine turtles (“cases”) using monthly bulletins from the US Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD, available from 2006 – October 2021, https://www.justice.gov/enrd/selected-publications/environmental-crimes-monthly-bulletins) as well as press releases from the ENRD and state agencies. We also deployed a form of snowball sampling where if during analysis another case was referenced that had not been previously identified through the above sources and it met our criteria for inclusion, we added it to our analysis. Cases had to involve the illegal trade in turtles sourced from the US to be included in our analysis. This included cases that explicitly involved the trade of species native to North America but may have been prosecuted elsewhere (e.g., cases where North American species were trafficked from the US into Canada and the offender was prosecuted in Canada). This also included cases where the offender acquired turtles in the US and was prosecuted in the US, but the specific species involved were not stated in case summaries.

We identified 54 cases prosecuted from 1998–2021 that we included in our media search. We searched for corresponding news articles related to each case in NewsBank using the name of the person or the business charged with illegal trade (e.g., "David Sommers") AND “turtles”. This search resulted in 867 associated articles. We removed duplicate articles (e.g., AP stories posted in multiple outlets verbatim) and irrelevant articles (e.g., real estate or sports articles) and analyzed the remaining 217. Articles did not have to be solely about the case to be included but had to mention it. For example, articles about turtle-related books that reference certain cases were included, but articles that quoted a charged individual about turtle-related activities (e.g., turtle farming) but predated a charge were removed.