US says sea turtles endangered
Loggerheads on the decline
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed yesterday that loggerhead sea turtles be considered an endangered species throughout much of the world, including the North Pacific and Northwest Atlantic oceans.
In the Northwest Atlantic, the turtles have seen a nesting decline of 40 percent in the past decade. In the North Pacific, populations are down about 80 percent, and specialists fear that the turtles are on the brink of extinction. Scientists first petitioned the government in 2007 to change the turtles’ “threatened’’ status to “endangered.’’
“It is a very big day for loggerhead sea turtles,’’ said marine scientist Elizabeth Griffin of Oceana, an environmental advocacy group based in Washington. “I hope this is a turning point and that people start taking loggerhead sea turtle conservation more seriously.’’
The endangered species measure now goes through a public comment stage and could be in force by summer of 2011.
With the endangered declaration, advocates hope the government will designate critical habitats for the turtles, especially on their nesting beaches, which on the East Coast usually stretch from Virginia to Florida. This would place a special conservation and management status on such beaches.
But the biggest threat to the turtles has been the danger of getting caught up in fishing gear. If adopted, the endangered status would press the fishing industry to take steps such as installing “turtle exclusion devices’’ in their nets, which would allow the animals to escape.
“They get caught up in nets, and in some countries they’re illegally [captured and] killed,’’ said Connie Barclay, a spokeswoman for the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “Fishermen are being very proactive and are becoming even more so.’’
Griffin expressed concern that the government took nearly three years to take action on loggerhead sea turtles. She said the government was supposed to respond to such petitions within one year.
“It’s been a much slower process than we would have liked,’’ she said.
The government identified nine groups of loggerhead sea turtles and proposed upgrading seven groups — in the Mediterranean Sea, North Indian Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, Northeast Atlantic Ocean, Northwest Atlantic Ocean, South Pacific Ocean, and Southeast Indo-Pacific Ocean — to “endangered’’ after finding that they faced risk of extinction. All nine groups are already considered threatened.
“Loggerheads will disappear from the Pacific without greater protections from capture in fisheries,’’ said Todd Steiner, executive director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network, which advocates for the turtles on the West Coast. “Action is more urgent than ever.’’
John M. Guilfoil can be reached at jguilfoil@globe.com. 
