Every summer, thousands of people travel to Padre Island National Seashore at sunrise to cheer for sea turtle hatchlings as they are released into the waves.
It is a major tourist attraction for this national park on the Texas coast and a conservation success story – the result of a decades-long effort to save the endangered sea turtle.
But after more than 40 years of supporting and celebrating the program, National Park Service officials appear to have been determined to pay for it.
In a recent report, agency officials proposed radical changes to the park’s conservation efforts that scientists say would make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to establish a thriving population of Kemp’s sea turtles on the island.
The report suggested that saving sea turtles took up too much of the park’s budget and was at the expense of other priorities, such as restoring habitat and cleaning up litter. He called for decreasing the number of beach patrols to find turtle nests, limiting biologists’ research to the park boundaries, and moving away from the practice of collecting and hatching turtle eggs to protect them from predators, rising tides, and visitors. they drive on the beach.
The park’s hugely popular hatchling releases are “discretionary,” according to the report, and “should be reduced” to save money.
“I am really shocked,” said Christopher Marshall, director of the Gulf Center for Sea Turtle Research at Texas A&M University in Galveston. If the agency’s recommendations are implemented, “there will be fewer scientific studies and less will be known about sea turtles in general,” he said. “I think the gains we have made in the last decade will be undermined.”
Donna Shaver is the Chief of Marine Turtle Science and Recovery for the National Park Service on Padre Island.
(National Park Service)
Lawyers for the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a legal complaint Wednesday with the National Park Service on behalf of one of the park’s employees, Donna Shaver, head of the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program. They called for the report to be reversed, arguing that accepting its recommendations would violate the Endangered Species Act.
Pacific PEER Director Jeff Ruch said that since the report’s release in June, Padre Island National Seashore Supt. Eric Brunnemann had ordered that the program’s budget be reduced by 30%. Two federal grants totaling $ 300,000 for research on threatened green sea turtles have already been canceled, he said. In the agency’s report, officials recommended that park staff focus almost entirely on Kemp turtles, ending their collection and care of green and loggerhead turtle eggs.
A park spokesman rejected a request to interview Shaver.
In a statement sent after this story was posted online, Brunnemann said: “The National Park Service’s only plan is to strengthen the program, which is built with the support of our employees and volunteers.”
The average size of a sea turtle hatchling can be seen in this ranger’s hand.
(National Park Service)
In 1978, when Kemp’s parrot tortoise nesting program began on Father Island, the species was in such danger that biologists began sending it to zoos and aquariums, convinced that the turtles were on the verge of extinction. Although turtles mainly nested in Mexico, they had been so poached that scientists decided to create a second colony in the United States to improve the species’ chances of surviving natural disasters and human interference.
Throughout the 1980s, scientists worked to convince turtles to think of Father Island as their new home. They transported thousands of eggs from nests in Mexico to the narrow barrier island, releasing hatchlings in the Gulf of Mexico and crossing their fingers so that the turtles can return again.
The entire experiment was based on the then controversial idea that female sea turtles would return to the beach where they were born to spawn. In 1996, the first ones did.
Kemp’s puzzle is still critically endangered, but its number has increased, peaking in 2017 when beach patrollers found 353 nests in Texas.
And with that growth came national attention. The National Park Service increased turtle conservation program funds in the mid-2000s, and Shaver won millions of dollars in grants to support his work. Earlier this year, she was named a finalist for the Samuel J. Heyman Service for the United States Medals, better known as “Sammies” or “Oscar of Government Service,” one of the highest honors for a federal public servant.
Kemp’s sea turtle nests are collected and counted on Padre Island National Island.
(National Park Service)
When the agency released its report in June, sea turtle scientists in Texas said they were surprised by their calls for budget cuts and restrictions on research.
“It is definitely money theft, in my opinion,” said Jeff George, executive director of Sea Turtle Inc, a private rescue center on South Padre Island. George, who was interviewed by the report’s authors, said they had ruled out Kemp ridley’s numbers in Texas as only a small fraction of the species’ general population and downplayed the importance of the park’s conservation efforts.
“They don’t understand the realities of Texas and how vast and remote it is. They don’t know how delicate things were in Mexico last year and they can be from year to year, ”he said. “All they see is a large amount of money spent for 1% of the population.”
Some scientists were especially critical of the report’s recommendation that turtle eggs be increasingly left in their nests or placed in protective pens, rather than digging and taking them to a hatchery.
Kemp’s ridley nests are easily overrun by hungry coyotes and fire ants, or destroyed by tides that can extend into the dunes. If the beach patrollers do not collect the eggs soon after being laid in a nest, it is often too late.
Texas law also poses a unique challenge. The beaches are classified as public roads and beach driving is permitted year round on Padre Island.
However, for agency officials, the program’s conservation practices seem excessive. “Whether this level of intensive wildlife management is still necessary is a legitimate scientific question now that Kemp’s numbers have increased from the low identified in the 1970s that prompted the intervention,” the report said.
A young Kemp calf is heading home to the ocean.
(National Park Service)
Marshall and other scientists insist that it does. While the number of species has increased, many biologists consider the Padre Island nesting site to be a work in progress that is far from established.
“Because these turtles are critically endangered, every egg matters,” said Marshall. “Why would you risk losing half of your nests on the upper Texas coast? Maintaining the alternative cologne is very important. No matter what the percentage is, this is our insurance policy. ”
