Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 21 Aug 13;
Balikpapan. Conservation activists have warned of a massive increase in thefts of turtle eggs in the past month from a key nesting island off East Kalimantan’s Berau district, as locals continue to defy a ban on the practice.
Rusli Andar, the coordinator for WWF Indonesia’s East Kalimantan marine program, said on Tuesday that around 4,000 eggs were being stolen from the beaches of the ostensibly protected Sangalaki Island every day, or the equivalent of what 40 turtles could lay in a night.
“This has been going on for a month now, because whenever the BKSDA [provincial natural resources conservation agency] tries to patrol the area, it faces threats from villagers from neighboring islands,” Rusli said.
“That’s allowed the theft of the eggs by the villagers to get out of control.”
He warned that the spike in the thefts, coinciding with the nesting season for the endangered green turtle that runs from May until September, posed a serious threat to the survival of the species.
Conservation activists from WWF Indonesia and the Berau Turtle Foundation were forced off Sangalaki by residents of neighboring Islands in September last year, leaving the turtle nesting sites largely unprotected. Since then, the only conservation presence on the island has been a single BKSDA official, Rusli said.
He added the islanders were taking advantage of the high prices offered for the eggs in the Kalimantan hinterland, particularly Tarakan in North Kalimantan, where consumers were willing to pay up to Rp 10,000 (94 US cents) per egg.
Rusli credited tighter law enforcement for the reduction in the turtle egg trade in Samarinda, the East Kalimantan capital and previously the regional hub of the illegal practice, and called for more to be done to crack down on the trade elsewhere in the region.
He added that WWF Indonesia had urged the Forestry Ministry to put an end to the long-running problem of turtle egg thefts, especially given that they were occurring on Sangalaki, which is meant to be off-limits to human activity.
“This is supposed to be a conservation area, but if the government can’t manage it properly, it should allow the private sector to take over,” he said.
Tandya Tjahyana, the BKSDA chief, said separately that his office was powerless against the sheer number of people trespassing onto the island to steal the eggs.
“Of course we have officials posted on Sangalaki, but they can’t cover every area,” he said.
“And we can’t deploy all our officials there. Besides, we don’t want to spark any conflict with the residents. I understand why people feel we’re not being serious about protecting the area, but the truth is we can’t do it all on our own.”
Rusli previously said that since conservation activists were expelled from the island, large amounts of trash had piled up on the beaches where the turtles nested, further reducing the prospects of the eggs hatching properly and the young turtles swimming out to sea.
“There are no more conservation activities going on there. The turtles are laying their eggs and people are promptly taking them. There’s just no attention being paid to this problem,” he said in April.
“If this isn’t addressed immediately, we will lose a key turtle habitat, because Sangalaki is the biggest nesting site for green and hawksbill turtles in the Berau marine conservation area.”
Sangalaki is one of 12 islands in the Berau maritime conservation area, which spans 1.2 million hectares and contains 3,000 fish species and at least 500 species of coral.
The illegal turtle egg trade in Kalimantan has also had an impact further afield, with poachers supplying the eggs from as far away as South Sulawesi.
