NEW DELHI: There could be hope for the Olive Ridley turtles and other threatened varieties with India joining the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the conservation and management of marine turtles and their habitats of the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia.
The United Nations has declared 2006 the ‘Year of the Turtle’ in an effort to save the gentle species. According to one estimate, published in New Scientist, two-thirds of these animals could vanish in the next 20 years.
Before India, 25 countries in the Indian Ocean Southeast Asian (IOSEA) region, including the Philippines, have signed a MoU dedicating 2006 to the protection of sea turtles. The objective of the MoU is to protect, conserve, replenish and recover marine turtles and their habitats. It will facilitate in carrying out and conducting research on turtles in the region.
Having survived natural hazards for millennia, sea turtles are now under severe threat from human activity, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The biggest threats come from dynamite fishing, indiscriminate harvesting of eggs and conversion of the sandy areas where turtles nest to resorts and other commercial facilities. In India, despite conservationists raising a storm periodically, Olive Ridley turtles continue to face threats. Last week saw Greenpeace bringing to light deaths of thousands of these turtles in Orissa, allegedly due to fishing.
According to the organisation, this was likely to be just a fraction of the population killed every year as many carcasses are never washed ashore. The group said in a statement that fishing in protected areas in the sea continued to kill hundreds of turtles each month as they get caught in nets or mangled by engine propellers.
The Olive Ridley turtle is found in the coastal regions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Each winter, hundreds of thousands of them return to the beaches of Orissa to lay their eggs, attracting hundreds of tourists.
Greenpeace said given a low natural survival rate - only one in 1,000 hatchlings is believed to reach adulthood - “the inescapable reality is that the turtle population will not survive this rate of attrition”.
It warned that if turtles die in their thousands each winter, Olive Ridley numbers could face “total collapse” in a decade.
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