Hello, I am Eric B. Holt, the owner of this site and its content.  This page was created to give visitors and potential customers an idea of who I am and what this website is all about.

My Background

My first experience with turtles came in Chicago in the early 1970's around the age of three. Like most turtle hobbyists my first turtles were Red-eared Sliders, two of them. Unfortunately, like most turtles sold to the uninitiated, they didn't live long. I was fascinated by the turtles and despite, or perhaps because of, so grim a beginning I wanted to try again and this time do better.

My father was career Air Force and we moved every few years. While living near Enid Oklahoma I would find turtles on our farm and nearby roads and keep them for a few weeks. During this time I would observe them and find out all I could about them by repeatedly checking out the reptile books in the school, city, and base libraries. Then I would release the turtles near where they were found. I knew that I didn't know enough to keep them alive long term, and as a child I thought their turtle friends would miss them. On numerous occasions I would intentionally miss the school bus so that I could check out the creek and a water treatment facility that were between my house and school. These places were loaded with turtles. I would run to them and then spend time looking around, until I had to run again to make it to school in time. This probably was the basis for the long distance running I did later in life.

Finally, in 1981 I  again attempted long term turtle keeping while living in Soesterberg the Netherlands. Once again, it was with Red-eared Slider hatchlings. In 1984, while living near Aviano Italy, I bought my first tortoises (Greeks and Hermann's) at the Sacile Bird Festival. I joined the USAF in 1988, was trained as a teletype and secure communications technician and spent my enlistment with 1st Combat Communications traveling Europe and the Middle East. It was during this time, living in Wiesbaden, that I expanded my horizons and began keeping a wider variety of species. By 1992 I was breeding turtles. I moved to Florida at the end of 1993 and in 1995 came up with the name Empire of the Turtle to cover all my turtle activities. In 2002 I launched this website, which is still growing and will probably never be complete.

In 35+ years of turtle keeping I have kept over 85 species of turtle and tortoise at one time or another and have bred many of them. My current collection is made up of 1,000+ turtles and tortoises, and is comprised of 50 species.

Other information about me:

I have a Bachelors of Science in Biology from the University of Central Florida.

I am a TSA partner and a member of PIJAC and USARK.

I am an avid kayaker, diver, fossiler, and herper.

Mission Statement

In regards to my turtle collection: I have turtles because I am interested in turtles. I have no desire to have it all, or to be a dealer. I intend to breed the species in my collection over many generations, without inbreeding, and hope that my excess hatchlings go on to start or diversify the gene pool of other collections, reducing or eliminating the market for wild caught turtles. Eventually handing off the collection when I get too old or take the eternal dirt nap.

My intent is that this website will be far more than a sales platform for my hatchlings. By sharing my turtle-centric life on the internet I hope to inspire and inform people's interest and awareness of turtles in particular and the natural world in general. Nature isn't something that should only be viewed through a window, book, or television. The more people know, especially from first hand experience, the more they will care. At the same time I also want to advocate for responsible ownership of turtles.

Empire of the Turtle

In 1995 while trying to come up with an appropriate name to put on business cards, I was also reading heavily about the significance of turtles in various cultures. Much of it was myths and legends. Two articles in particular stuck out. One was a Native American story of creation that referred to turtles as the shelled tribe. The other was about one of the khans. He used large stone turtle statues to mark the borders of the land he held. Inscriptions on the statues informed travelers that the land beyond was his. His empire. Things clicked into place and Empire of the Turtle was born. It wasn't until 2002 that it made it to the internet.

There is the Empire of the Turtle of the wider world with fossils and living turtles marking the "shelled tribe's" 200+ million years of existence on this planet. They have existed on every continent on this planet and many islands. They inhabit the land from deserts to rain forests and freshwater through brackish to the salt water of the oceans. Only the sky has escaped them.

Then there is the Empire of the Turtle of my life. As I look back, so many of the milestones in my life were/are marked by turtles. My interest in turtles has led me to take up a number of activities (fossiling, herping, kayaking, scuba), it has given focus to my academic and conservation interests as well as my disposition to collect (turtle art, turtle books, turtle coins, turtle fossils), and it has brought me into contact with a variety of interesting people that I wouldn't have ever met if not for a shared interest, even if it was a passing one for them, in turtles.