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U.S. Wants Loggerhead Turtles Added To Endangered List
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March 12, 2010 2:16 p.m. EST
Topics: politics, regulatory policy and organization, conservation, endangered species, environmental issue, United States
Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) - The U.S. government has proposed upgrading loggerhead turtles from threatened to endangered. The proposal was made after a review of the status of loggerheads worldwide found the sea turtles "currently at risk of extinction."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are soliciting public comments on the listing change they are seeking. They will accept detailed information about population trends, turtle behavior and harmful human activities for 90 days.
The proposal is in response to petitions from the Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and other conservation groups in 2007 asking to re-classify loggerheads as endangered.
The groups say the population of the sea turtles has dropped by at least 80 percent in the North Pacific. If the current trend in the region continues, loggerheads could be extinct by the mid-21st century.
Nesting of loggerheads in Florida, which hosts the largest nesting population of the turtles in the Northwest Atlantic, has declined by more than 40 percent in the past decade.
An endangered status would provide loggerheads with more protection, including a designated critical habitat.
The turtles face multiple threats such as the loss of nesting sites, entanglement with commercial fishing nets, oil slicks and feeding on debris such as deflated balloons and plastic bags mistaken as food. Mammals who need to surface for air, their shells are also often damaged by boats.
Loggerheads, like all sea turtles, lay their eggs on or near the beach where they were born as hatchlings. Unhatched eggs and hatchlings face the risk of being eaten by predators or illegally harvested by humans. Lights from resorts and boats may confuse hatchlings, who follow the light of the moon to reach the ocean and swim away to safety when they emerge from the egg.
Sea turtles can also become "cold-stunned" because as cold-blooded animals, they assume the temperature of their surroundings. Prolonged frigid temperatures in shallow waters caused a record number of turtles to become cold-stunned and immobile this winter in Florida, and NOAA rescued 5,000 of the animals in the state and autopsied hundreds that died.
NOAA and FWS have reviewed the status of loggerheads and are proposing to list nine separate groups, called distinct population segments or DPS, of the turtles worldwide.
The agencies want two groups, in the South Atlantic Ocean and in the Southwest Indian Ocean, to be listed as threatened. They say the remaining seven populations in the North Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean, Southeast Indo-Pacific Ocean, North Indian Ocean, Northwest Atlantic Ocean, Northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are endangered.
"Loggerheads will disappear from the Pacific without greater protections from capture in fisheries," Todd Steiner, executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network, said in a statement. "Action is more urgent than ever with the recent expansion of the Hawaiian swordfish fleet and the tripling of loggerhead capture."
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