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Joy Bloor has just told me she will not be re-opening her Tortoise Sanctuary at Sticker, even though her charges are now awakening from their seasonal slumbers and looking for their breakfast lettuce. "We did spend a lot of time thinking about this over Christmas and the New Year and have come to accept that we will not be re-opening to the public," she told me. Joy said Defra's requirement to micro-chip the tortoises, because they are an endangered species covered by international law, was the final piece of bureaucracy that made her throw in the towel. The closure to the public, which Joy hopes will not affect the welfare of the tortoises, follows a two-year battle with Cornwall Council over whether or not the Sticker Tortoise Sanctuary should be regulated as a zoo.