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 Editorials | Environmental | September 2005 
Mexican Sea Turtles Get Armed Escorts in Fight Against Poachers
 Patrick Harrington - Bloomberg
| | Laws barring the killing of protected sea turtles and the sale of their eggs have been as effective as anti-drug trafficking programs: driving the practice underground but failing to stop it. |
One of Antonio Diaz's favorite meals isn't on the menu at any restaurant in his hometown of Acapulco, Mexico: sea turtle meat.
"It has lots of vitamins," said Diaz, 42.
Fifteen years after the country banned killing turtles, Mexicans such as Diaz keep eating them because of the perception they enhance male virility.
In the past five years, Mexico has doubled the number of police and troops working to save turtles in an effort to protect the animals and their eggs better on the nation's beaches. This month, as the egg-laying season reaches its height, conservation groups are intensifying efforts to save the turtles.
"The consumption of eggs is increasing," said Aida Navarro, 30, conservation manager for Wildcoast, a San Diego, California- based environmental protection organization. "If sea turtles aren't allowed to reproduce, there is no way they can recover."
About 150 inspectors, accompanied by about 1,000 Navy troops patrol the 28 most important of 200 beaches where sea turtles nest during the height of the egg-laying season, said Luis Fueyo MacDonald, 51, Mexico's senior environmental law-enforcement official for marine life in Mexico City.
Beach Guards
Agripino Cortes Moreno, who commands the 14 environmental officers working with Monica Vallarino, who runs the nearby Hermosa Beach Turtle Camp, said it's impossible to protect Mexico's more than 9,000 kilometers (5,421 miles) of coastline.
"You can see the problem," he said, pointing along the beach that stretches into the distance. "We can't patrol most of it."
The focus of government anti-poaching efforts has changed since 2000. Before, more emphasis was placed on attempting to prevent their sale in markets and alongside highways.
On a beach just south of Acapulco, Vallarino accompanies a group of environmental police armed with assault rifles. A call on her cell-phone alerts her to the arrival of nesting Olive Ridley turtles about a kilometer (1,094 yards) away.
Vallarino and police race along the beach to where the turtles have emerged from the sea. An officer or volunteer stands guard by each turtle while she lays as many as 100 golf ball-sized eggs and then escorts her as she drags herself back to the ocean.
"Poachers are everywhere in this area," said Vallarino, 40. "Without a guard they will take them away."
Volunteers carry the eggs to the Hermosa Beach camp, where they take about 50 days to incubate. The hatchlings are then released into the ocean.
Poachers
To avoid patrols, some poachers catch female turtles at sea, slice them open to remove their eggs and then dump the bodies into the ocean. On a single day last month, 80 such carcasses washed up on a beach in the southern state of Oaxaca.
In a country where the minimum wage is just more than 45 pesos a day, the incentive is clear. An egg sells for as much as 60 pesos on the black market, meaning a single nest can yield 6,000 pesos.
Juan Carlos Cantu, director of Defenders of Wildlife's Mexican branch, said poverty alone doesn't explain the egg trade. In coastal areas, people sometimes collect eggs to buy alcohol and clothes.
"We've found that egg stealing increases on weekends and before festivals - it isn't a question of needing resources to survive," Cantu said.
Endangered Species
All five species of marine turtle that inhabit Mexico's waters are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland.
Three are considered "critically endangered," meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction. The leatherback, which can weigh as much as 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) and measure up to 1.8 meters (6 feet) in length, is the most threatened.
Until the 1980s, Mexico was the leatherbacks' most important breeding ground, Cantu said. Since then, the number of females nesting in Mexico each year has fallen to less than 10 from 880.
To help curb the illegal trade, groups such as Defenders, Greenpeace and Wildcoast have begun campaigns to convince Mexican men that eating turtle eggs does nothing for their virility.
One Defenders' poster shows a man with turtle egg dripping from his mouth along with the caption: "You drank the lie - turtle eggs are not aphrodisiacs."
Wildcoast's posters of sparsely clothed models above a caption that reads, "my man doesn't need turtle eggs" provoked objections from Mexico's National Women's Institute, which complained that it was demeaning to women.
Wildcoast said the billboard is effective because it attracts attention.
"In the end, we came up with the idea of using a good- looking woman saying that, `if you are consuming sea turtle eggs you are letting me know that you are not man enough," Navarro said.
The campaigns have done little to persuade Diaz to drop the habits of a lifetime. Turtle eggs make men more potent, and he recently ate some, courtesy of his brother-in-law who works near the beach, Diaz said.
"Thirty years, ago my grandmother took me to the market to drink turtle blood," Diaz said. "It's just like any other kind of seafood."
Patrick Harrington in Mexico City at pharrington8@bloomberg.net |
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