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24th January 2003
By Tessa Unsworth
BANGKOK (Reuters)
More than 20 Asian and African countries have agreed to step up efforts to save sea turtles from egg poachers, suffocating fishing nets and tourist encroachment, a United Nations environmental expert said on Friday.
Representatives of 40 Indian Ocean and Pacific rim countries gathered in Bangkok this week to discuss the deal, in the knowledge that the leatherback and hawksbill turtles could disappear from the region within a decade.
Tens of thousands of turtles are being killed each year, trapped in the nets of trawlers, and whole generations are being wiped out on some beaches by egg harvesters, who sell the eggs for food.
"That level of mortality is just not sustainable. You're looking at a total decimation of the population in a matter of decades," said Douglas Hykle, a senior official of the U.N.'s Convention of Migratory Species, which brokered the agreement.
Most countries are expected to sign by next week.
Hykle told Reuters signatories of the deal had committed themselves to conservation programs aimed at preventing human abuse of turtles and their habitats.
Governments will spread the message that uncontrolled egg collection is unsustainable. They will also promote turtles as a tourist attraction and encourage fishermen to modify nets to let turtles escape.
"We have come to realize that these creatures are a shared resource, and that we need to share the responsibility of protecting them," Hykle said.
Hykle said the agreement would bring countries with past success in rebuilding turtle populations, such as South Africa and Indonesia, with those where only a few turtles are left.
Egg harvesting on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia, for example, has reduced a thriving population of thousands of breeding female Leatherbacks down to only five in the past 30 years.
"It will take 50 to 100 years to build the population up to a respectable number again," Hykle said of Malaysia.
"When you get down to such low levels, only a concerted program over decades can recover the situation," he said.
"Some countries in the region, such as Cambodia and Vietnam, didn't even know which species of turtles they had until only three years ago, and they're trying to restore populations that are down to the tens."
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