Environmental and social diagnostic around marine turtles
Maintirano and Barren Islands Region and its challenges
Five out of the seven species of marine turtle in the world are known to visit regularly the coastal region of Madagascar.
These are Chelonia mydas (green turtle), Eretmochelys imbricata (hawksbill turtle), Lepidochelys olivacea (olive ridley turtle), Caretta caretta (loggerhead turtle) and Dermochelys coriacea (leatherback turtle). Among these five, four are nesting on beaches on the coast or on small islands around the country (green, hawksbill, olive ridley and loggerhead). Marine turtles are subject to high human pressures in most of their feeding and nesting areas. Their eggs are systematically collected and nesting females and individuals feeding on coral reefs are caught to be butchered for their meat. The consumption of marine turtle eggs and meat is so entrenched in local fishers’ culture like the Vezo community that any strategy aiming to conserve these threatened animals must integrate robust social and economical approaches. The Archipelago of the Barren Islands is composed of seven small islands located at about 50kms south west of Maintirano (Melaky region). They are inhabited during the dry season by Vezo communities from Toliara and Maintirano regions, who practice traditional fishing, and for some of them, marine turtles, shark or holothurian collecting.
So Challenges are:
So Challenges are:
- Development of a new proposal,
- The feasability study of establishing a marine protected area around the Barren Islands should reach a level that will trigger the processus creation, but the project will end december 2009,
- The Committee should be supported technically and financially to pursue the implementation of the environmental conservation strategy.
ACT 3: Sex ratios - baselines and adaptation measures
Project Data
- Managing Office: WWF Madagascar and West Indian Ocean Programme Office
- Address:
WWF Madagascar and West Indian Ocean Programme Office
B.P. 738
Antananarivo 101
Madagascar
+261 20 22 348 85
Project objective and description
This project aims to support the setting up of an integrated conservation and management plan of marine turtles in the Maintirano and Barren Islands Region.
Despite expressions of political will, marine turtles are still faced with a number of key threats which have severely reduced marine turtle populations. With six of the seven species of marine turtles classified as endangered or critically endangered, WWF MWIOPO has decided to support a RUIG (Geneva Universities Network) and MHNG (Museum of Natural History of Geneva) project in Maintirano and Iles Barren region (Western Madagascar). This is to ensure that these magnificent ancient mariners are saved. Though all five species are regularly sighted near the islands, little is known about their behavior, their nesting and feeding sites as well as their interaction with the Vezo community. This project will support activities that aim to:
- Increase knowledge on marine turtles visiting the Barren islands
- and the surrounding marine ecosystems;
- Identify the origin of the visiting individuals and their relationship
- with marine turtles populations in the western Indian Ocean marine
- ecoregion;
- Understand the interaction between marine turtles and the Vezo community;
- Identify alternatives to marine turtles fishing;
- Raise awareness on their ecological function and the threats on their habitats; and
- Contribute to the elaboration of an integrated marine turtle conservation and management plan.
Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) juvenile caught by fishermen as accidental catch in their fishing nets. In many countries, juvenile marine turtles are caught, stuffed and sold as curios to tourists. Marine turtle eggs are considered an aphrodisiac in some countries and eaten raw or sold as snacks in bars and restaurants.
Fishermen are going to put to sea
Achievements
The scientific data analysis has as result that the Maintirano and Barren islands area is mainly a feeding zone of marine turtles, and not really a nesting zone.
The mains effects of the raising of the public’s awareness are:
- The creation of a Committee (Melaky Region Marine Environment Management Committee). Its action plan includes compensatory measures or alternative actions to meet the socioeconomic needs of fishing communities ( a fishing village- Ampasimandroro, has received a supply of drinking water by the project).
- The reducing of the major threat of marine turtle: the abattoirs in the town of Maintirano agreed to close; fishers specializing in turtle capture have joined our conservation team; and systematic hunting by local people has all but disappeared until February 2009 (start of the political crisis in Madagascar);
- The importance of turtles and their conservation is growing among students, fisher communities and region’s authorities.
- A strategy of conservation of the marine environment is available. Regular meetings between the project team and local communities are held.
- The UPTM (Union of the Fishers in Maintirano)- indigenous peoples’organization is involved in the development and implementation of the strategy of turtle conservation.