An insight into Africa's threatened sea turtles.

Urgent international efforts are needed to conserve West Africa's sea turtles, with studies showing that the region holds some of the world's most important feeding and nesting sites, many of them under threat. The call is being made by the Secretariat for the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), which has commissioned the first-ever comprehensive report on sea turtles on the Atlantic coast of Africa. The international treaty body, linked to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is charged with conserving the vast array of migratory animals.

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of UNEP, says: "The report's findings should spur us all to redouble efforts to protect sea turtles on Africa's Atlantic coast. In the Western Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, populations of sea turtles have been falling dramatically in recent years. This makes these findings in Western Africa doubly significant, given its now undoubted status as a globally important region for sea turtle species."

The report points out that the long beaches of southern Gabon hold the largest number of Leatherback turtles in the world, ahead even of those of French Guiana in South America. A newly discovered population of Loggerheads, which may be the largest in the Atlantic, has also been discovered on Boa Vista, part of the Cape Verde group of islands.

Meanwhile, Mauritania, with significant areas of seagrass beds, is considered to have the most important feeding grounds for Green turtles in West Africa. Olive Ridley turtles, whose numbers are in sharp decline in South America, can be found nesting from Guinea-Bissau all the way to Angola, the report says.

Douglas Hykle, Deputy Executive Secretary of the CMS Secretariat, says: "Africa has been one of the last frontiers in marine turtle research and conservation. This report gives us our first comprehensive picture of how important the Atlantic coast is to sea turtles, while underlining the real threats to the survival of the six species it surveys. It is clear that action at international, regional and national levels is urgently needed if these extraordinary marine animals are to survive and thrive for future generations."

Traditional subsistence use of sea turtles is permitted, but large numbers are being systematically slaughtered for their meat and eggs sold for food beyond what is sustainable. Considerable numbers are dying after becoming entangled in fishing nets. Others are being killed for their shell, which is carved...