World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

ECUADORTHREATSNo information located, other than that concerning exploitation andincidental take (see below).EXPLOITATIONGreen and Ortiz-Crespo (1981) note that C. mydas is taken in very smallnumbers for local consumption and accidentally in shrimp and fishing netsall along its range, especially around Santa Rosa and La Libertad in GuayasProvince; nesting females and eggs were taken whenever encountered onnesting beaches, although numbers were so low that they were notspecifically searched for. Varnished carapaces are frequently sold intourist areas such as Playas in Guayas Province (Green and Ortiz-Crespo,1981).Eretmochelys was reportedly taken less often than Chelonia . being rarer.Virtually all those taken were caught incidentally in shrimp and fishingnets; the meat was not eaten, although the eggs were taken on the rareoccasions they were found. Varnished carapaces, plastrons and stuffedjuveniles were found on sale in some tourist areas, such as Playas (Greenand Ortiz-Crespo, 1981).International trade CITES statistics indicate considerable quantities ofC. mydas skins and skin or leather products exported from Ecuador, almostall to Italy, in the years 1979-83, amounting to several thousand skinsannually. However, Green and Ortiz-Crespo (1981) state categorically thatthe only species of marine turtle commercially exploited on an internationallevel in Ecuador is the Olive Ridley ( Lepidochelys olivacea ) ; they givedetialed figures of production and export levels of this species for theyears 1970-79. C. 130 000 kg of skins, representing c. 70 000 OliveRidleys, were exported from Ecuador in the first six months of 1979 alone.Virtually none of this trade appears in CITES records under Lepidochelys ; itcan thus be assumed that the Ecuadorean trade reported in CITES as involvingC. mydas in fact involves Lepidochelys . This may be because when Italyratified CITES in 1979, it took a reservation on C. mydas but not onLepidochelys olivacea . Thus to admit imports of L. olivacea would be toadmit contravention of CITES.ECUADOR:GALAPAGOSPOPULATION:Chelonia mydasNesting sites Nesting is known to occur on all major islands exceptRdbida, Pinzon, Genovesa and possibly Fernandina (Pritchard, 1975; Green,1983). The most important beaches are Quinta Playa and Bahia Barahona onsouthern Isabela, Las Salinas on Baltra, Las Bachas on northern Santa Cruzand Espumilla on the north-western side of Santiago (Green, 1983). In theearly 1970s Pritchard surveyed all major islands in the archipelago forevidence of nesting (Pritchard, 1975). There are reportedly c. 50 km ofbeaches on the archipelago, although the proportion known to be used byC . mydas is unclear; detailed studies to date have concentrated on only6.8 km of beaches, although these are the ones most heavily used (Green,1983).171