Saving the turtles saves ourselves.

AuthorHeng, Chan Eng
PositionBrief Article

The existence of sea turtles on earth pre-dates that of man by more than I 150 million years. In the past, they roamed freely by the millions in the world's oceans and hauled themselves ashore its sandy beaches to nest in no less spectacular numbers.

But today sea turtle populations around the world have become severely depleted. Mankind has taken over their nesting beaches, stolen their eggs, polluted and destroyed their habitats, and relentlessly hunted them for their meat and beautiful shells. They also suffer needless death by the hundreds of thousands in fishing nets and long lines that are deployed throughout the world's oceans.

Against such a scenario, do the turtles have a chance to survive into the next millennium? The answer is a big, conditional 'yes". lust as man has brought the sea turtles to the brink of extinction, it will be man who can save and return them to their rightful place on earth.

Saving the turtles is no easy task. Their habitat requirements range from undistrubed nesting beaches to seagrass beds, coral reefs, intact soft-bottom habitats and open ocean environments, where Leatherback turtles follow oceanic currents in search in jellyfish.

The biological demands of sea turtles cannot be compromised, and conservation programmes targeted at any population must cut across national boundaries. This is because the sea turtles undertake long-distance trans-boundary migrations between their resident feeding grounds and nesting beaches.

As an illustration, we have discovered that Green turtles, which nest in Malaysia, travel to near shore seagrass beds located in the neighbouring countries of Indonesia and the Philippines. Our colleagues from the region have similarly reported that their turtles migrate into Malaysian waters. Such information immediately lends support to the recently concluded Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation and Management of Marine Turtles and their Habitats of the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia, an initiative of the Convention on Migratory Species.

While conservationists from advanced and rich nations can argue for the protection of sea turtle eggs, many nesting beaches occur in third world countries, where the chronically poor are still dependent on turtle eggs to either earn a living or provide them with a much-needed protein source. This is the dilemma faced by turtle conservationists from third world countries: protect the sea turtles and deprive the poor.

We seem to have struck an...

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