Sea Turtle Recovery Action Plan for St. Kitts and Nevis - WIDECAST

CEP Technical Report No. 17
In Nevis, the Nevis Environmental Education Committee has successfully brought
together a broad cross-section of the community to focus on environmental matters. These
include representatives of Youth and Community Affairs, Adult Education, the Womens' Desk,
Department of Education, Public Library, Nevis Historical and Conservation Society,
Government Information Service, Representatives of the business sector, Public Health
Department, Hotel Association, Fisheries Office, and Tourism officials. The Committee plans to
provide bundles of leaflets ("fact sheets") on various topics, including sea turtles, at NEEC
meetings so that participants can later distribute them within their own organizations.
4.6 Implement National Sea Turtle Conservation Programme
4.61 Rationale
It is clear from the information provided in this Recovery Action Plan that three species
of sea turtle, all classified as "endangered" by the World Conservation Union (Groombridge,
1982; Groombridge and Luxmoore, 1989), utilize the waters and sandy beaches of St. Kitts and
Nevis for feeding and for nesting. These species are the hawksbill, leatherback (river turtle), and
green turtle (Figure 3). A fourth turtle, the loggerhead, is classified as "vulnerable" by the World
Conservation Union and is occasionally reported in offshore waters. In order to prevent the local
extinction of these species, government and non-government agencies and groups need to
implement measures to conserve and manage remaining stocks. Planning for the conservation
and management of sea turtles involves two steps: (1) the identification of habitat upon which
sea turtles depend and (2) the elaboration of criteria and the implementation of regulations to
ensure that serious habitat degradation is prevented and that all stages of the life cycle are
protected to the greatest degree possible.
The objective of this Recovery Action Plan has been to provide specific sea turtle
management recommendations which can be translated into regulatory action. If these
recommendations are fully incorporated into the legislative and institutional framework of St.
Kitts and Nevis, native sea turtles are likely to survive.
The virtually unregulated harvest of sea turtles and eggs over many generations,
combined with historical and contemporary stresses on habitat, has resulted in a dramatic decline
in the number of sea turtles feeding in local waters and nesting on the beaches. For example, six
or more leatherbacks (sometimes referred to as "river turtles") could be observed per night on
Conaree Beach 30 years ago, whereas today a hunter may wait several nights without seeing a
single turtle. Older fishermen remember the green turtle to be common, especially along the
Caribbean and peninsula coasts of St. Kitts; today nesting is rare. Residents recall when the
beaches of the southeast peninsula were "covered with sea turtle crawls", both hawksbill and
green, during the nesting season; a survey of six peninsula beaches during June-August 1992
revealed not a single green or hawksbill turtle nest. The same scenario has played out in Nevis.
Similarly, the historical record provides evidence of sea turtles in local waters in abundances
which are nearly unimaginable today. Even over the lifetime of older fishermen and divers
interviewed for this Recovery Action Plan, the conclusion is inescapable that populations of
juveniles and adults at sea have noticeably diminished. The trend is not so easily seen from year
to year, but is unambiguous over the last four decades.
Page 78