Satellite tracking employed to protect endangered turtles

Transcript

A critically endangered turtle species in Solomon Islands is being tracked to try and extend its lifespan.   
 
Richard Hamilton, a scientist from Nature Conservancy says the Hawksbill Turtle's migration patterns are being monitored across the south Pacific to gain an understanding of the reptile's nesting habitats, and make sure it is safe from poaching. 

He explained how it all began to Lucy Smith. 

RICHARD HAMILTON: In early April we started a project where we put 10 satellite tags on the shells of female nesting Hawksbill turtles. It's a species which is critically endangered. The project where we did the tagging was in the Arnavon Islands in the Solomon Islands it's the largest  hookery for hawksbill turtles in the western Pacific, and it's been a community based conservation area since 1995. So putting these satellite tags on the backs of these turtle, so you essentially get a turtle after she's nested and then you fibreglass a satellite tag onto the back of her shell and every time the turtle comes up to breathe with any luck you get a GPS signal which uploads to the satellite  and you get a fix on the location. Firstly we're keen to see where the turtles go when they're into nesting habitats, so any one turtle can nest up to 6 times in the nesting season, the other one was to see how loyal turtles are to one beach and the third purpose was to get an idea of where these turtles go when they're done nesting in the Solomon Islands. 

LUCY SMITH: And what can you do with this information? 

RH: The first thing we can do is we can tell whether the current protection areas are sufficient. So in the Solomon islands there's still a lot of turtle harvesting both legal and illegal it's legal to take turtles for sustenance purposes but unfortunately there is still an illegal trade in the shell which is feeding international markets. The information has given us a really good understanding of whether or not those turtles are actually sufficiently protected by that area during the nesting period. And if we see a lot of turtles spending a considerable amount of time outside the protected areas then we have a strong case for expanding the protected area boundaries'

LS: What do they do with them on the international market? 

RH: So Hawksbills in particular have a really beautiful shell, which is often turned into jewellery etc. Their primary reason for decline, that's a critically endangered species it's reduced in population more than 80% in the last 3 generations. That's primarily driven by the trade for their shell. In the old days couple hundred years ago that was all going to London turned into bangles and hair pieces etc. Now most of the trade is going to asian markets, originally Japan but increasing into mainland China that is driving quite a trade.