Finally, some good news: endangered sea turtles are recovering because ome conservation efforts seem to be working.
A paper published earlier this month in Inter-Research Science Publisher reveals that more than half of the 48 surveyed “regional management units” (RMUs), or groups of sea turtles that share the same habitat and face similar population threats from around the world, show signs of recovery. While some individual species are still at risk of extinction, the global trends highlight a heartening improvement.
The researchers, including wildlife ecologist Bryan Wallace from Ecolibrium wrote that the survey “results demonstrate the apparent efficacy of many existing conservation strategies,” and that it highlighted “several cases of favorable — and improving — conservation status at the RMU scale.” According to the results the population of those RMUs increased “on average” and “threat impact scores improved for nearly twice as many RMUs (53%) as worsened (28%).”
There are only seven species of sea turtles, also known as marine turtles, in the world. Six of them are classified as threatened or endangered, with the seventh—flatback turtles—not included because of insufficient data. Despite the limited number of species, sea turtles live in many of the world’s oceans across numerous diverse habitats, according to the study. Unsurprisingly, most threats to sea turtles are human-caused, including climate change, fishing bycatch, habitat loss, plastic pollution, collisions with sea vessels, coastal developments, and poaching for consumption and tortoiseshell trading.
There are also nuances to this promising new data. The Pacific Ocean hosts most sea turtle populations facing high-risk threats, while a majority of the populations with low-risk threats are in the Atlantic. Furthermore, “the sole Kemp’s ridley Lepidochelys kempii RMU had the highest species-level risk score, while risk and threat scores for leatherbacks were the highest among species with multiple RMUs,” the researchers wrote. In fact, Kemp’s ridleys are the most endangered sea turtles in the world, according to the National Park Service, and leatherback sea turtles are suffering from declining nesting populations in the Pacific.
In the US, all sea turtles are now protected by the Endangered Species Act, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) bans international trade of sea turtle species and their parts.
“Many of the turtle populations have come back, though some haven’t,” Duke ecologist Stuart Pimm, who did not participate in the research, told the Associated Press. “Overall, the sea turtle story is one of the real conservation success stories.” While it’s important to keep a realistic view of humanity’s persistent harmful impact on sea turtles, the survey is proof that conservation endeavors bring about positive change and will hopefully inspire further efforts. We can’t fix everything we destroy, but when we try to we get real positive results.
