Ocean Sentry
Xcaret, Mexico’s biggest private ecological park, will set a record this year with 2,000 baby turtles hatched in the park as part of a successful program of breeding and releasing these endangered marine creatures, company executives told Efe.
Located some 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the city of Cancun on the Mexican Caribbean, the Mexican company began in 1993 its so-called Initiation Program, which consists of maintaining for 15 months two nesting sites for turtles in captivity, who are then released into the sea after receiving special care and feeding by a specialized team of veterinarians.
Most government and private projects to free turtles in Mexico take the creatures to sea only weeks or even days after hatching.
On the contrary, between February and March each year Xcaret Park sets free about 200 turtles that on the average are 30 centimeters (1 foot) long and therefore have a greater chance of surviving the predators lying in wait for them.
The turtles are released with tourists looking on, giving each one a name and wishing them well before letting them go into the sea.
“One of the program’s main goals is to raise people’s awareness about the plight of marine turtles in Mexico,” Ana Cecilia Negrete, coordinator of operations and preventive medicine for marine turtles in Xcaret, said in an interview with Efe.
Southwestern Mexico is home to the green, hawksbill, loggerhead, white and, to a lesser degree, leatherback species of sea turtles, all of them “in grave danger of extinction,” Negrete said.
The principal dangers to Mexico’s turtles include the invasion of their habitat – the beaches – by people, sport fishing, the depredation of their nests by some communities that still eat their flesh and eggs, and injuries to some of them by outboard motors on boats.
Xcaret, which according to Negrete has the world’s most important collection of marine turtles with 300 on show, has also undertaken since 2003 the treatment and cure of those found injured or stranded.
To date the park has received more than 120 of the marine creatures suffering skull fractures, being run over, injured by boat propellers, caught in fishnets, and even poisoned by oil spills.
Veterinarians at the park have achieved a recovery rate of 98.4 percent for the turtles they receive.
In addition, through its foundation called Flora, Fauna and Culture of Mexico, Xcaret protects Xcacel Beach to the south of the Maya Riviera, the main nesting ground for the country’s green sea turtles.
At that location, every nesting season – from May to October – up to 6,000 turtle nests can be found, of which the Mexican company, with the authorization of the local government, takes two for its installations.
The Mexican park also promotes programs of breeding other species that have received worldwide recognition.
Last March 20, Xcaret and the Delphinus company set the Guinness record for having the most births of baby dolphins in one year in a single dolphin refuge, with 11.
On April 27, 2006, Mexico’s legislature voted in favor of reforming the general wildlife law to ban catching sea turtles in Mexico for commercial or subsistence purposes.
(From laht.com, Mexico, by Juan David Leal)
