Mining pits trap the turtles which come to the shore for nesting; authorities are taking action to halt mining.
Mining seems to be rocking more lives than the BJP leadership in Karnataka. In Gujarat, it is the sea turtles on the coast of Jamnagar whose world has been shaken up by illegal sand mining.
Two species - Green Sea Turtle and Olive Ridley Sea Turtle - come to Jamnagar coast to nest during the mating period. They select clean and deserted sandy beaches where the females lay an average of 80-120 eggs at a time and return to the sea leaving the eggs to hatch naturally under the sand.
After about 60 days, the eggs hatch and the baby turtles head towards the sea to return to their home range. However, only a few hundred of the total hatchlings are able to reach the sea and even fewer survive to adulthood as most of them either lose their way or are hunted by carnivores.
Marine National Park, Jamnagar runs a Sea Turtle Hatchery near Madhopur, in Porbandar district to facilitate hatching of eggs collected naturally. The hatchery has claimed great success in conservation of marine reptiles. During the last five years, on an average about 6,000 sea turtle eggs were collected and brought to the hatchery, out of which roughly 5000 hatched successfully every year and were released into the sea. A record number of 8,713 individuals were hatched and released into the sea in 2010-11.
However, the turtles’ paradise was disturbed by sand miners in the coastal areas. Huge pits were discovered at Okha, Shivrajpur, Mithapur, Dwarka, Lamba and other areas of Dwarka and Kalyanpur talukas. Earlier this month, a female sea turtle was reportedly found trapped in a big pit created due to sand mining near Dwarka.
Shocked by this, officials at the MNP wrote to the collector to take action against the offenders. “The local authorities, including the forest and police departments, have cracked down on the offenders, but some sporadic incidents continue. We have also dug up the road the miners’ tractors ply on. In recent times, the activity was gaining huge proportion with commercial demand coming from surrounding factories,” said RD Kamboj, the chief conservator of forest at MNP.
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