leatherbacks facing extinction

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New Straits Times

 

EARTH MATTERS: Leatherbacks facing extinction

Oscar Nunez Olivas

 

Apr 06:

 

Leatherback turtles face extinction within a decade unless a coherent

conservation strategy is adopted to halt their decline. OSCAR NUNEZ OLIVAS

writes.

 

THE leatherback sea turtle, one of the world’s most ancient species, could

be wiped out within a decade unless the international community takes urgent

action to protect it, experts warned at a recent forum in Costa Rica.

 

One of six of seven known turtle species in danger of extinction, and the

largest of them, the leatherback’s case is the most dramatic due to the

almost 100 per cent drop in numbers since 1982, around 1,000 specialists at

the 14th International Symposium on Marine Turtles heard.

 

" Sea turtles act as our warning mechanism for the health of the ocean, and

what they’re telling us is quite alarming. Their plummeting numbers are,

unfortunately, symptomatic of the ocean as a whole, " said Roderic Mast,

vice-president of International Conservation and president of the

International Sea Turtle Society.

 

Experts fear that on the Pacific coast of the Americas, barely 3,000 females

of reproducing age survive, compared with 1987 figures of an estimated

115,000, said Mast.

 

The leatherbacks, placed on the critically endangered list, are viewed as a

living fossil that has existed for 100 million years.

 

According to specialists, the main hazard to the turtles’ survival is

accidental capture due to modern techniques of mega fishing vessels which

kill up to 40,000 of them a year.

 

" The Pacific leatherbacks currently face an annual mortality rate of up to

30 per cent, " said James Spotila, Drexel University professor of

environmental science. " That rate is clearly unsustainable, and without

dramatic intervention, we can expect to see them disappear in as soon as a

decade. "

 

The development of the hotel business and uncontrolled tourism, as well as

theft of turtles’ eggs from beaches, are other important factors for the

species’ rapid decline.

 

Organisation president Russell Mittermeier underlined that technology

already exists to reverse the trend in declining marine life, with simple

cheap technology to reduce the rate of accidental capture of these and other

species available.

 

Costa Rica’s Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodriguez said that

leatherbacks’ situation is most critical and symbolic of what is occurring

among other marine species " that have missed out on a coherent conservation

strategy " by many countries, he said.

 

In the last 50 years, the major sea predators such as swordfish and tuna

have dropped in numbers by 90 per cent, according to International

Conservation.

 

Rodriguez pointed to a more generalised need to protect marine resources.

 

The minister announced that the Costa Rica Government had issued a decree

insisting upon the protection of 25 per cent of its maritime patrimony,

which is 10 times greater at 510,000 square kilometres, than its land mass,

also similarly protected.

 

Some 78 nations took part in last month’s symposium which stressed that the

leatherback would be lost to posterity unless the international community,

researchers, governments and the private sector start working together to

prevent that happening.

 

Mast also called for more studies of the turtles’ habits while in the sea,

as opposed to on land which is better known.

 

Mittermeier said that US$18 million (RM68 million) would be enough to

establish a sea protection plan for the creatures over an initial five-year

period, citing estimates put forward at a Mexico congress in 2003.

 

The ecologist said marine protection is some 15 to 20 years behind other

areas of protection policies on the continent. — AFP

 

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