WHAT CAN BE DONE TO RESTORE PACIFIC TURTLE POPULATIONS?
The Bellagio Blueprint for Action on Pacific Sea Turtles
6 January 2004

During 17-22 November 2003, a group of 25 experts met in Bellagio, Italy to draft a Blueprint for Action on Pacific Sea Turtles. The group recognized the serious state of sea turtle populations in the Pacific and the escalating nature of human threats to the turtles. However, taking a broad view of successful sea turtle conservation cases in other parts of the world and promising policy and management actions in the Pacific, they concluded that actions to save the threatened and endangered species were possible. Consequently, the Bellagio Blueprint for Action on Pacific Sea Turtles is presented here for the first time. The Blueprint urges protecting all nesting beaches, reducing turtle take in at-sea and coastal fisheries, stimulating Pan-Pacific policy actions and encouraging the sustainability of the traditional use of sea turtles.

In addition to this description of the Blueprint, the Bellagio experts are developing a full policy brief and other products for wide dissemination on an individual basis. They are taking up the actions recommended in forthcoming environment and fisheries policy and management forums.

CONTEXT

Figure 1. Key leatherback nesting sites remaining in the Pacific The 10 principal leatherback nesting sites remaining in the Pacific  1. Terrenganu, Malaysia  2. War Mon, Papua-Indonesia  3. Jamursba-Medi, Papua-Indonesia  4. Papua New Guinea  5. Solomon Islands  6. Baja California, Mexico  7. Michoacan, Mexico  8. Guerrero, Mexico  9. Oaxaca, Mexico 10. Las Baulas, Costa Rica

The Pacific Ocean is the habitat of 5 species of widely distributed sea turtles and one restricted to Australian waters that evolved nearly 30 million years ago. All species are long-lived and slow growing. They take from 10 to 30 years to reach maturity and exhibit complex life cycles involving eggs laid in nests on tropical beaches, natal beach homing and extraordinary feeding and breeding migrations that can span the entire Pacific Ocean. Sea turtle populations are slow to increase and replace themselves. The flesh and eggs of these large marine animals have provided food over centuries for many coastal communities throughout the Pacific islands, along the west coast of the Americas and throughout east Asia and eastern Australia. They also provide ornaments such as those made from the distinctive tortoise shell of the hawksbill and are important in the cultural and social identity of many traditional societies.

The long life, wide ranging migrations and value to humans make sea turtles susceptible to many forms of mortality, including direct and incidental takes from coastal and oceanic fishing activities - all of which have increased over the last decades. The persistence of these impacts without correction, particularly in combination with traditional extractive uses, has rendered the species increasingly vulnerable to extinction.

Consequently, all of the 5 widely distributed species in the Pacific have now been registered as endangered (green turtle � Chelonia mydas, olive ridley turtle � Lepidochelys olivacea) or, worse, critically endangered (leatherback turtle � Dermochelys coriacea, loggerhead turtle � Caretta caretta, and the hawksbill turtle � Eretmochelys imbricata). The Pacific leatherback is now the most endangered sea turtle in the world, and the loggerhead is also in serious trouble. Some populations are close to extinction, and the Malaysian leatherback population, once one of the most abundant in the world, may have already disappeared. Extirpation of a sea turtle population is generally irreversible because females tend to return to reproduce to the beaches where they were born and, therefore, it is highly unlikely that lost rookeries will be recolonized by turtles born elsewhere.

The restoration of such broad-ranging endangered species will only be accomplished if urgent and coordinated actions across national boundaries are practiced, aimed at critical interventions to mitigate the many threats across the entire Pacific.

To address these issues, a unique group of 25 economists, marine life policy experts, fishing industry and fisheries professionals, conservation, sea turtle and natural resource management specialists and development assistance researchers met during 17-21 November 2003 at the Bellagio Conference Center in Italy to create a blueprint for the conservation of sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean. The Blueprint for Action on Pacific Sea Turtles proposed by the Bellagio meeting includes: (1) the protection of all nesting beaches; (2) reducing turtle take in at-sea and coastal fisheries; (3) stimulating Pan-Pacific policy actions; and (4) encouraging the sustainability of the traditional use of sea turtles (see Table 1).