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afrol News, 8 August - A new study surveying the different threatened species of sea turtles points at the Atlantic coast of Africa as their key feeding and nesting site after this resource has become or is becoming extinct at other coastlines. More conservation efforts are however needed, the report claims. This afrol News editor himself has eaten an omelette of sea turtle eggs on the southern shore of Bioko island (Equatorial Guinea) - at that time with good conscience. The people of the isolated village of Ureka assured me they indeed had been told the sea turtles were an endangered species, but they also said they were harvesting the resource in a sustainable way - following ancestral traditions. - One year, we pick some eggs at the beaches west of the village, the next year, we pick some eggs east of the village, my guide from Ureka told me. "So there will always be enough," he argued, convincing me. His argument would have been right if the sea turtle species were as isolated as his village. And if his fellow countrymen at Corisco Bay had not shifted from the practices still used in Ureka to commercial hunting to please the urban markets in Bata (Equatorial Guinea) and nearby Libreville (Gabon). In fact, a new report by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) shows both I and my source in Ureka were wrong. "Urgent international efforts are needed to conserve West Africa's sea turtles with studies showing that the region holds some of the world's most important feeding and nesting sites, many of them under threat," the UN agency concludes. The CMS just published the first-ever comprehensive report into sea turtles on the Atlantic coast of Africa. The CMS, which is linked to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is charged with conserving the world's vast array of migratory animals. Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of UNEP, yesterday commented: "The report's findings should spur us all on to re-double efforts to protect sea turtles on Africa's Atlantic coast. In the Western Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, populations of sea turtles have been falling dramatically in recent years. This makes these findings in Western Africa doubly significant given its now undoubted status as a globally important region for sea turtle species". Equatorial Guinea is - still - blessed with a high population of sea turtles, both the relatively untouched coast of continental Río Muni, rich on mangroves and beaches, and the wild, southern coast of the ex-volcanic island of Bioko, which is uninhabited except for the tiny village of Ureka. The CMS report emphasises on the regional importance of this Equatoguinean resource. One of Río Muni's most important feeding and nesting sites are the mangroves of Corisco Bay - at the Gabonese border- which possess exceptional sea grasses. Along with similar areas found in Mauritania and Angola, Corisco Bay "represent the region's key feeding grounds for the Green turtle. Nesting beaches south of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea are of primary regional importance for the species too," the CMS reports. One eyewitness, quoted in the report, says: "The inhabitants of the Bay of Corisco have incorporated turtle hunting in their way of life for many generations. Recently, however, turtles have switched from being a source of subsistence protein for local consumption to being a highly quoted market product in great demand in the cities, especially Libreville and Bata. Although some turtles are captured incidentally in fine-mesh fishing nets, most are hunted with special nets, harpoons or underwater guns. There are approximately 50 fishermen around the Bay of Corisco dedicated exclusively to capturing sea turtles". The report also points out that Gabon's reproductive stock of Leatherback sea turtles is "the second largest in the world, if not the first". Yet it adds that: "Female Leatherback turtles are systematically killed on the beaches and eggs stolen". On this regional situation, the CMS report suggests two classical solutions: money for conservation and prohibition of the resource exploitation. "Money is needed for guards and international funds for monitoring of Leatherback nesting sites is also urgently required." But who should pay for this? The Equatoguinean and Gabonese governments? Now, the "highly migratory species," which "come to feed or breed from as far away as South and North America" suddenly are a local, Central African problem? - A transborder study and wildlife agreement between the two countries is needed to end the exploitation of Green turtles by the local Benga people, the report argues. And then what? It was not possible to locate recommendations in the report on how the Benga people involved in making money out of their local resource basis were to be compensated for this loss of livelihood. Will the UNEP build a tourist complex for sea turtle safaris, which could mean alternative employment for the Benga people? Will they invest in alternative industries? After pinpointing the important insight that one cannot isolate the sea turtle nesting at a Ureka beach from the global population, the report falls back into regionalism. We must conserve sea turtles even where they seemingly are abundant - their conservation is a global issue. But the costs are to be distributed to those states and local societies that have still not overexploited this genetic resource. Sea turtles have ruled the beaches in most subtropical and tropical climate zones, including the Mediterranean and US coasts. They have had to escape tourist invasions or have been hunted down for capital rising, which has contributed to the initial welfare building of many Western and Far Eastern coastal villages. Now, the global survival of sea turtle populations depends on the African Atlantic coasts, still an underdeveloped tourism resource. Should African fishermen be intercepted from raising capital from sea turtles' flesh and eggs? Should African craftsmen be prevented from carving turtles' shells into ornaments and sell these to tourists? Should large coastlines be prevented from a development into tourism? On the other hand - should these old species be sent into extinction? Environmentalists in Paris or Los Angeles will agree with commercial Benga turtle hunters and subsistence gatherers in Ureka that this should be avoided, even if the costs might be felt. The difference is, however, that the Benga people and the people of Ureka will feel the costs in their personal economy, contrary to those idealists in Los Angeles and Paris - a paid environmentalist lobby. The CMS report, though indeed valuable surveying the sea turtle population, does not seek global solutions to a global problem, and thus will find it difficult to be accepted by African governments and African Atlantic local societies.
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