‘Less than 1,000 turtles left on Pakistan’s shores’

WWF and wildlife department continue to work on conservation and awareness.

KARACHI:

It was an example of successful lawmaking. The number of turtles along Pakistan’s coastline increased from a few hundreds to nearly 1,000 after the Sindh government passed a law in 1979 to protect the endangered species.

The government’s intention was to protect the Green and Olive Ridley turtles, which have been usually found along the Sindh and Balochistan coastline since 1972. The Sindh Wildlife Department started working on conservation and campaigns in 1979 and according to its records, the number of turtles along the Karachi coast is slowly increasing. Good news indeed and just in time for World Turtles Day, which is observed on May 23 (today).

“The number of turtles increased after over 0.7 million turtles were released in the sea in the last three decades,” said deputy conservator Fehmida Firdous. “The number of female turtles that come to the sandy shores to lay eggs has considerably increased so we know the conservation efforts are paying off,” said Firdous, adding that commercial trade and sea development hinder conservation efforts.  But by far, increasing coastal development is the biggest threat. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Pakistan Sindh Wetlands Centre has been trying to protect their habitat. “Our centre has been closely monitoring the Sandspit and Hawkes Bay beaches and released 2,250 hatchlings in the sea in 2001,” said the centre’s Dr Babar Hussain.  “However, we were only successful after we worked to protect the turtles’ habitat.” Dr Firdous believes that 1,000 is still not a sustainable figure. “We need at least 2,000 turtles on the shore to allow any sort of trade or hunting,” she said, pointing out that turtle trade is a lucrative business.

Tahir Qureshi, a marine scientist at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Pakistan, added that catching turtles in fishing nets also stunts the growth of their population. “The IUCN is now working to introduce the turtle excluder devices (TED) in Pakistan.” TED is a device inserted into shrimp trawl nets to reduce the chance of accidentally catching turtles. The projects mostly apply to the green turtle specie since Olive Ridley turtles have not been seen on the beaches since 2005, said Dr Hussain. The wildlife department has already started a new project, ‘Protection and Conservation of Marine Turtles at Karachi and Keti Bunder’, over the last year. They are extending their search to other beaches, besides Hawkes Bay and Sandspit, for nesting turtles, especially the endangered Olive Ridley specie.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2011.