Turtle Farm hiding behind ‘conservation curtain’

| 06/08/2014 | 2 Comments

(CNS Business): The Cayman Turtle Farm claims to be a conservation facility. But World Animal Protection (WAP) representative Neil D’Cruze says those claims may not be true and there may be an element of a “conservation curtain that is being hidden behind”. He told CNS Business, “If you look at Cayman turtles nesting on the beaches here it has been an incredible turnaround”, but while the numbers have definitely increased, it’s difficult to assess whether that’s a direct action of the farm or due to the stellar work of conservationists, both locally by the Department of Environment and in the wider Caribbean.

It’s important to address the root causes of sea turtle decline, which are many, said D’Cruze, who is WAP Head of Wildlife Policy and Research. It’s not just poaching; sea turtles ingest plastics and get caught up in nets; there is habitat destruction, beach destruction and marine pollution, he said, and efforts that are being made globally to try and address these threats may have also contributed to the rise in numbers of turtles.

One of the key claims of the CTF is that its releases of farm-raised turtles into the wild are directly responsible for the increase in the number of turtles nesting on Cayman beaches. “Even if all 100 turtles nesting on the beaches were from the Cayman Turtle Farm, they’ve released approximately 35,000, as we’ve been told,  over the years since 1968, so that’s a pretty poor return rate.”

Looking at the expense that’s involved, CI$10 million every year, he said, “it does make you question how much each turtle cost” and whether there are other ways to actually conserve sea turtles.

“It’s important to stress that Cayman is the only island that currently uses a turtle farm as a conservation strategy,” he said, pointing to the heavy economic costs associated with that which are not associated with other possible strategies, such as increased enforcement, more DoE staff, more boats, increased surveillance, public awareness campaigns.

“Many other countries would snap the hand off an offer of 10 million Cayman dollars to support their wild sea turtle conservation efforts,” D’Cruze said, noting that it was an important step forward that the CTF’s releases have been put on hold until the end of a study looking into how many turtles nesting here are actually from the farm.

Another issue regarding the CTF’s releases is one of genetic pollution. Because of the huge number of animals at the farm, almost 10,000, there are huge disease risks and the implications of releasing turtles into the wild that may be harbouring disease, even though they may not be showing any sign at the time of their release, is a major conservation concern, D’Cruze stated.

Another hidden risk is that of introducing genetic problems via these releases because 10,000 animals is a limited genetic stock and nobody really knows the impact that is having on wild sea turtle populations, he said.

Related article: No formal steps by CIG on turtle meat for tourists

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Comments (2)

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  1. Yup, its Me says:

    And WAP is definately hiding behind a conservation curtain. Only its even more threadbare than the Farm’s.

    1) If wild turtles have a 1-in-1000 chance of going from hatchling to breeder and if, to use Dr. D’Cruze’s example “all 100 turtles nesting on the beaches were from the Cayman Turtle Farm, [and] they’ve released approximately 35,000,” then thats actually 2.9-in-1000 or over twice the the 1-in-1000 that wild turtles achieve. But all 100 aren’t from the farm and Dr. D’Cruze clearly isn’t a doctor of mathematics. Lets just hope he’s not supposed to be a doctor of conservation. Otherwise turtles are in trouble.
    2) Regarding the genetic pollution. Either the turtles are so endangered that any extra turtle helps, i.e., they’ve moved beyond the need to worry about genetic pollution. Or they’re not really that endangered in which case, again, they can take some extra genetics getting mixed in. Perhaps for his next lecture Dr. D’Cruz can speak to gentic bottlenecks in populations and hybrid vigour. But I guess that would take WAP off of their talking points and not enable quite as much fundraising dollars to pour in as bashing the Cayman Islands does.

  2. couchie says:

    Here we go again (David and Goliath ) every one from around the world is trying to save the birds,the trees,the animals and land creatures,all the sea creatures. Some want to save Cayman for Caymanians If only one day i can see there is someone try to “Save Caymanians for Cayman”

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