Genus Cuora is distributed from China to Indonesia and the Philippines, throughout mainland Southeast Asia, and into northern India and Bhutan.

Nancy Karraker, a University of Rhode Island associate professor, has said "Trafficking in turtles is a major issue in Southeast Asia, and it's important that we understand the key ecological roles that species like this box turtle play before it's too late,"[2] Different conservation organizations are taking action to prevent or slow down the extinction of these species, but in the past, most of the efforts failed due to lack of biological research regarding the history or genetic diversity of these species.

[3] Asian box turtles are terrestrial, semiaquatic, or mainly aquatic, most spending much of their time on the edge of shallow swamps, streams, or ponds that are dense with vegetation.

Listed alphabetically by binomial name, the species are:[4] Cuora serrata, originally described as C. galbinifrons serrata by Iverson & Mccord[10] and later considered a distinct species[11] is a hybrid of the keeled box turtle and taxa of the Indochinese box turtle complex as shown by the genetic studies of Parham et al.[12] and Stuart & Parham (2004).

[12] Wild-caught C. amboinensis specimens were frequently available in the exotic animal trade, but are getting rarer now; other species are rare to commercially extinct.