For
GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 8. Excerpt: ...ALTHOUGH GREEN SEA
TURTLES have inhabited the Pacific coast of Mexico for millions of
years, for the past few decades these ancient mariners (known locally as
tortugas prietas or “black turtles”) have struggled to survive a
relentless onslaught of hunting. As recently as the early 1980s, there
were still some twenty-five thousand of their nests each year along the
Mexican coast. But as demand grew for turtle meat and eggs in Mexico and
across the U.S. border, turtle hunting multiplied exponentially. When
the Mexican government outlawed the trafficking of sea turtles in 1990,
turtle hunters were labeled poachers and smugglers overnight, but the
practice continued. By the mid-1990s, poaching, fishing nets, and
habitat pollution and destruction had caused the number of nesting
females to drop to less than five hundred. It was at this time that a
doctoral student named Wallace J. Nichols proposed studying the biology
and conservation of sea turtles in northwestern Mexico for his thesis,
but was told that cultural inertia was too great to overcome and it was
too late to even bother trying. Undeterred, Nichols and a colleague
traveled to Baja California to study the five species of sea turtle....
...Nichols attached a transmitter to a captured loggerhead’s shell. The
turtle...swam seven thousand miles from Baja California to nesting
grounds in Japan, marking the first time any animal had been tracked
swimming across an ocean. The experience convinced Nichols that the best
way to change cultural habits was to earn the trust and respect of a
local population, rather than alienate them through guilt and reams of
scientific data. ...Twenty years later, Grupo Tortuguero, the grassroots
network that Nichols helped found, is active in fifty coastal
communities. Hundreds of local volunteers, many of whom are former
poachers, work to protect and promote an appreciation for and pride in
these gentle animals. Says Nichols, “If given the chance, who wouldn’t
want the opportunity to tell their grandkids that they helped rescue
from extinction an animal that’s so central to their culture?” This year
there were some fifteen thousand green sea turtle nests on the beaches
of southern Mexico.... http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7486. Andrew D. Blechman, Orion Magazine. |
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