The Sasakolo rangers also record data on the number of nests lost to beach erosion and tidal inundation. Solomons Islanders can legally harvest turtle eggs for food, and many nests are predated by people. Rangers on these patrols also check the older nests, looking for signs of hatching or disturbance. Then they mark the location, before gathering data about the female turtle and attaching a small metal identification tag to her flipper. If they get the timing right, rangers can count the number of eggs in the nest as they drop from her cloaca. When they find a female, the rangers wait patiently while she digs a hole in the sand and lays her clutch of eggs. Work as a ranger means long nights walking the beach by torchlight, searching for the tell-tale signs of a nesting turtle: tire-like tracks up and down the beach, or a very large, dark lump of heaving, snorting, salt-covered turtle in the dark. The goal is to build the program to a 50/50 gender parity. Ero and her colleagues are consulting with the community to learn what else they can do to facilitate more female rangers to join. © Robert Taupongi / TNCįive women attended TNC’s turtle ranger training in November, and three of those women are now working as rangers at Sasakolo. TNC staff lead a ranger training workshop. “There has been a lot of progress with several women’s organizations coming in and talking to communities about getting women into decision making,” says Madlyn Ero, who leads TNC’s gender equity work in the Solomon Islands. But as conservation organizations like TNC build gender equity requirements into their work, the tide is slowly shifting. Women are often limited to domestic duties, while men dominate jobs that require technical expertise and make the majority of the decisions for family and community. Melanesian culture still has strict gender roles. And, in a first for the Solomon Islands, women rangers will now join the monitoring program. In late 2021, TNC-trained rangers resumed monitoring at Sasakolo for the first time in more than 10 years. The Nature Conservancy is partnering with the Solomon Islands government to start gathering these data from critical nesting beaches in Isabel Province, with funding from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). © Robert Taupongi / TNC Collecting Data, One Turtle At a Time Potential rangers examine a data collection sheet at the training. “They’re crashing hard, and it’s going to continue unless we arrest the decline,” says Peter Waldie, a fisheries scientist with The Nature Conservancy.īut conservationists can’t protect these turtles without data: where, when, and how often they nest, how many hatchlings clamber from sand to sea, and how many nests are washed away by rising tides. By 2040 years, scientists predict that the Western Pacific subpopulation will be whittled down to just 100 nesting pairs each year. Without action, it will continue to get worse. Scientists estimate that this population has declined to just 1,400 breeding adults, leaving them critically endangered. While the species is considered vulnerable at a global level, the subpopulation in the Western Pacific are faring far worse than others. The same turtles that can be seen by divers off the coast of southern California cross the width of the Pacific Ocean to nest on the narrow, palm-fringed beaches of the Solomon Islands. Leatherbacks, like many other turtles, are long-distance ocean travelers. They measure up to 6.5 feet long and weigh up to 1,300 pounds, dwarfing the rangers that look on from a distance. Located near Kafulapu community, this unassuming patch of land is one of the most important - and perhaps the largest - leatherback nesting beaches in the region.įrom October through February each year, a dozen or so turtles emerge from the waves each night, hauling themselves scooch by scooch up the beach. Sasakolo beach looks like any other in the South Pacific a strip of sand buttressed by coconut palms, low green hill rising in the distance. And, for the first time in the country’s history, female rangers will join the conservation efforts. The rangers walking the beach tonight are part of a new monitoring effort, led by The Nature Conservancy, to gather information about the Western Pacific leatherbacks nesting in the Solomon Islands. But with little data about this population, scientists are hard-pressed to understand and mitigate threats to these turtles. The turtles that nest on this narrow beach are some of the most endangered leatherbacks in the world. Voices muffled, they scan the tide line with flashlights, looking for the wide tire-tread marks left behind by a female leatherback sea turtle. Sand crunches beneath bare feet as the rangers walk along the beach.
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