Simple strategies could save Malaysia sea turtles

KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 (Reuters) Leatherback turtles that survived the age of the dinosaurs face extinction across the Western Pacific today, even though rescue strategies could be as simple as saving their eggs from fishing nets.

Conservationists and wildlife experts are meeting in Malaysia this week to find ways to raise funding for rescue programmes that will need to run for as many as 20 or 30 years before turtle numbers can fully recover, biologist Peter Dutton said.

''There's been a lot of concern about the catastrophic decline of leatherbacks around the Pacific, and a lot of effort put in to find out what is going on and what we can do to prevent their extinction,'' Dutton told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Leatherbacks, named for their leathery shells, are the largest sea turtles. They can grow up to a length of 6-{ feet (2 m), weigh nearly a tonne and survive until age 80, living in the ocean with the females only returning to land to lay eggs.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned last year that their numbers had plummeted because of egg harvesting and turtle hunting, while global climate change threatened breeding habits.

The number of nesting leatherback turtles in the Pacific has fallen to just 5,000, from about 91,000 in 1980.

Efforts to protect the turtles' nesting sites now focus on the Indonesian island of Papua, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, besides Malaysia, said Dutton, who heads the marine turtle research programme at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Leatherbacks used to be a star attraction for visitors to Malaysia's northern state of Terengganu, with tens of thousands of female turtles nesting on beaches there each year until the population collapsed in the late 80s, Dutton added.

Egg harvesting, turtle entanglement in fishing nets and deforestation led to the decline, despite strict laws, safeguards at nest sites and efforts to build hatcheries, he said.

The number of Malaysian leatherback rookeries has fallen to fewer than 10 nests each year this decade, from about 5,000 per year in the 1960s, the UNEP estimates.

Yet they have not vanished entirely, Dutton said.

''Now there's probably anywhere from 2 to 30 nests that get laid each year, so we still do have leatherbacks that come into Malaysian waters and are attempting to nest.'' Scientists at the Terengganu meeting aim to chalk out a fund-raising plan over the next six months that includes a long-term financing mechanism, such as an endowment fund, besides studying ways of getting companies to contribute, Dutton added.

Fishermen working off the northern Malaysian coast were keen to help save the turtles, a Malaysian researcher said.

''They are willing to pay the cost, either of fuel or machinery, to make sure the turtles don't die in their nets,'' said Bee Hong Yeo, quoting a recent survey of the fishermen.

REUTERS AM VV1338