ENVIRONMENT-CONGO: Group Raises Alarm on Marine Turtle Poaching

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lyne Mikangou

BRAZZAVILLE, Jan 22 2003 (IPS) - An animal rights group has appealed to the Congolese authorities to revise the existing endangered species law to include marine turtles among the country’s protected animals.

”Despite the benefits that sea turtles bring, they are being massacred by coastal residents for food or for economic reasons,” says Alexis Mayet, president of the Congolese Educational Association for the Environment and Nature, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), with the French acronym ACEN.

In its latest survey, ACEN says poachers had destroyed 63 turtle nests along the six-kilometre Conkouati Park, an animal reserve, between December 2000 and February 2002.

According to ACEN, the presence of a research team, on the coast, managed to reduce the predation rate from as high as 100 to 28 percent. Both the collection of eggs and the killing of turtles are regarded as poaching, an offence punishable by law in Congo.

”These animals have been slaughtered en masse for their meat. The harvested eggs go to markets in Pointe-Noire, the country’s economic capital, to be sold,” says an environmental advisor to Germain Kombo, the Minister of Mines and Environment. The number of turtles killed each year has not been disclosed.

Since 2000, the French Institute for Development Research (IRD) has been monitoring the nesting of sea turtles along the Congo coast to assess how best to preserve and manage the species.

The monitoring takes place mainly in the three locations where the turtles lay eggs: north and south of Pointe-Noire toward the border with the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, and the Bay of Cabinda.

South of the economic capital, the research team, led by Lucien Maloueki, a marine biologist, observes the remains of poached nests and the shells of turtles slaughtered in their egg-laying locations.

”In this section of the coast, it is hard to protect the species. We hope a series of awareness campaigns directed at people living in the Tchiama Nzassi region and the small-scale fishermen will be organised,” Maloueki suggests.

On the beaches of Pointe-Noire, both living and dead turtles often find themselves in the nets of fishermen, caught unintentionally. These accidents are frequent during the egg-laying season, which runs from October to January.

”From September to December 2001, we counted 40 leatherback sea turtles and 15 olive turtles caught by fishermen on 260 large motorised dugout canoes on the ‘Base Agip’ beach,” Maloueki says.

”These turtles are migratory animals who never return to the places where they’ve been massacred,” explains Kombo, who says the leatherback turtle was the most poached species in the Congo.

The sale of marine turtle eggs is lucrative. In the market, four eggs sell for 1,000 CFA (about 1.6 U.S. dollars). The females lay eggs every other year, on tropical beaches only. Each can have as many as 13 nests per season, and lay 30 to 130 fertilized eggs in each.

In Conkouati Park, three observation camps have been built along the 29.5-kilometre beach. The camps allow for the observation of 99 percent of the females who crawl up onto the beach to lay eggs. Removing some of the eggs and placing them in an incubator under constant surveillance has yielded excellent hatch results.

More camps will be set up during the 2002-2003 egg laying season, as well as a reliable network to provide information about coastal points between the Noumbi River in Conkouati and the village of Mboyamongo at the border with Cabinda.

Congo has ratified two international conventions on the protection of migratory species, including marine turtles. The first was adopted in Bonn, Germany and involves concerted action among all the countries through which the turtles migrate. The second one, signed in Washington, relates to international trade in threatened animal and plant species, turtles included. This treaty bans the hunting, slaughtering, and trading in the endangered species.

The turtle, which have been popularised – by campaigners and journalists – through the media, may prove a tourist attraction for the Congo, says Mayet.

But, to attract tourists, Mayet stresses the importance of encouraging local people to protect the marine turtles, and boost the food production of nearby villages.

A partnership with the local fishermen south of Pointe-Noire, on the border with Cabinda, has been set up to provide the groundwork for a participatory approach toward protecting the sea turtles, says Mayet.