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My first observation would be that good science requires that experiments be undertaken with the use of a single variable parameter, all others being kept constant. The results, positive or negative, can then be correlated with the variable parameter. Subsequently, other parameters can be varied, one at a time, and further insight into cause and effect may be gained. But this process takes time – time that may not be available if there is any kind of conservation emergency to be overcome. The classic example is that of Kemp’s ridley. This species was so depleted that we of the Bi-national Team tried everything we could think of – protective legislation, beach patrols, hatcheries, head-starting, TED usage, educational programmes, even use of helicopters to carry hatchlings over the huge Ixtoc oil spill. And it seems that this mix of activities generated the desired result – the species is apparently recovering well, with over 10,000 nests in 2005. But such comprehensive conservation effort inevitably results in bad science – we do not, on this evidence alone, know which was the key factor in generating the observed outcome; and perhaps there was no key factor – all the different components may have made their contribution.

Secondly, there is a very long delay between instigation of any marine turtle conservation effort (simple or complex) and detectable results on turtle populations, and even if good things happen, one cannot, in most cases, be certain that one caused them oneself (but see below for an exceptional case). Moreover, good results may be masked by the, often massive, natural fluctuations in the usual, measurable population indices such as numbers of female turtles coming to nest each season. Thus, one has to proceed with com-nonsense activities, reducing or eliminating whatever natural or man-induced sources of mortality one can, with no actual feedback for many years before one has any clue as to whether one was doing any good.

Thirdly, it is the very nature of educational efforts that one’s long-term results are hard to interpret. Children in school may take their exams seriously, but then never give another thought to the subject matter in later life. Or sometimes they do give many subsequent thoughts to their lessons, add their own concepts, and become contributors to the worlds of both ideas and action. The teacher faced with a brand new crop of first-graders every year will do his best to teach them, but it is an act of faith, not an experiment with quick results. Other teachers in later grades will try their best, and there ultimately may be some successes, but this is hardly something subject to cause-and-effect analysis; too many causes, too many effects. Similarly, in community interventions one tries to do something fair, reasonable, and potentially conducive to good conservation outcomes, but whether these actually occur depends upon the criteria for success that one chooses, the basic biology and responsiveness of the target species, the personality of the conservationist, the reasonableness of the suggested undertakings, and the mindset of the key members of the target community. Is there good “chemistry” between teacher and pupil? Will benefits continue after the conservationist has departed? (Yes – sometimes. The island of Mussau, north of New Ireland, was visited by 7th Day Adventist Missionaries in the 1930s, and everyone was converted to the faith. The rules of the Church forbid the eating of many forms of wild meat, including sea turtles, and when I visited in 1978, decades after the missionaries had left, the ban remained absolute and the now very abundant sea turtles were still never eaten. Pritchard 1979).

Another question: is the community able to organize in such a way as to control those individuals who fail to respect a community consensus, a public good, or will the Commons forever remain a Tragedy? And – the key question – can one ever assume that conservation gains will follow automatically if one provides general community benefits or alternative protein programmes, or does one have to “insist” on this, requiring that good outcomes be demonstrable if largesse is to continue? Or will people do things that they know will please you just out of decency, or because you have been kind to them?

Community responses to conservation-inspired manipulations can be highly positive, or they may sometimes take us into the mine-field of Unintended Consequences. An excellent positive response in Papua was actually reported in MTN 109 (Suganuma et al. 2005), just three pages after the Ferraro editorial. This involved the people of the Wau community on the north side of the Vogelkop Peninsula, who had traditional rights to Wermon Beach and its turtle resource. A number of members of the community habitually gathered turtle eggs for food. Four villagers were employed to generate data on nightly nest counts, and after a couple of months it was found that egg collection had stopped completely (although about 15% of eggs were still predated by dogs and monitor lizards). The egg collectors had been exposed to a different ethic, and they responded positively; or perhaps they just didn’t want to get into arguments.

Maria Teresa Koberg had a similar outcome at Playa Grande, Costa Rica, when she arranged for parties of boy and girl scouts to gather around nesting turtles; the hueveros had the decency not to disgrace themselves before such an idealistic audience, and were too lazy to dig the eggs out later after the turtles had covered them up and disguised the site.

My own work in Suriname in the 1960s (Schulz 1975) included two seasons of purchasing olive ridley eggs (about 300,000 per season) from the local Carib people at a small arribada beach called Eilanti. We hatched the eggs and released the hatchlings. All seemed to go well, although there was some muttering behind the scenes. The third year, 1968, the government declared the area (Eilanti Beach) to be a nature preserve, and the egg-buying programme stopped.

In the years that followed, the turtle population dropped rather than increased, presumably because of the many years of failed recruitment through 100% egg collection. Later the beach itself changed for the worse, with the buildup of extensive mud flats, heavy growth of young mangroves at the back of the beach itself, and growing inaccessibility to nesting turtles. Fewer and fewer ridleys nested, although much later – actually not until the last few years – our colleagues in extreme eastern French Guiana have reported that the beaches east of Cayenne (near the Brazilian border) were starting to be utilized by olive ridleys, and the latest news (Laurent Kelle, pers. comm.) is that small arribadas of 100 or more have been seen. One presumes the displaced Eilanti population shifted to a better beach.

So far so good. But the main Unintended Consequence was the damage to my own reputation. Last year, while sipping cocktails with two senior Carib Casiques in French Guiana, I was told a story of a tall young white man who frequented the Eilanti area nearly forty years ago, and proceeded to put metal tags on the nesting ridleys. This abuse of the turtles, they reported, caused the turtles to depart, and they had never come back. This sinister figure, who drove the turtles away became known to the tribe as “Kadalu Yolokan” (“Turtle Devil,” in the Carib language). I had to confess to the Casiques that the Yolokan was actually myself, but, far from being a devil, I am personally confident that the new French Guiana arribadas of olive ridleys comprise “my” turtles, derived from the hundreds of thousands of hatchlings that we produced and released at Eilanti all those years ago. There was no other source in the region.

So direct payments can work, but you usually have to require that the desired restraints and behavior changes actually occur, as Ferraro and Kiss (2002) have argued. Moreover, the payments don’t always need to be continued forever. Societies and civilizations change, and the practice of living off nesting sea turtles is something that a community can simply outgrow, as it progressively moves into the cash economy, or becomes more law-abiding. I have observed this in Vieques Island, where egg collection was a severe stress upon turtles in the 1960s, but is hardly a crucial factor anywhere in Puerto Rico today.

Finally, there is another side to the issue of marine turtle conservation being a “weakest link production technology,” at the mercy of abuse or negligence at any one of the many phases of the life cycle. But sometimes one can override these hard-to-quantify stresses by the relatively simple procedure of pumping as many hatchlings into the supply line as possible, by maximizing protection at the nesting beach stage. At least two marine turtle nesting colonies – the olive ridleys at Escobilla (Mexico) and the green turtles at Tortuguero (Costa Rica) – have maintained or even enhanced their numbers, in the face of chronic heavy exploitation on the feeding grounds, by this means. In both cases it is highly probable that the “natural” demography, in which old adults predominated in the population and recruitment to the adult ranks was relatively low, was replaced by an “artificial” demography with younger adults predominating, relatively high adult mortality, but enhanced levels of recruitment of neophyte breeders.

FERRARO, P.J. 2005. An economist’s reflections on the 25th Annual Symposium for Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation: Empirical program evaluation and direct payments for sea turtle conservation. Marine Turtle Newsletter 109:2-6.

FERRARO, P.J. & A. KISS. 2002. Getting what you paid for: direct payments as an alternative investment for conserving biodiversity. Science 268: 1718-1719.

PRITCHARD, P.C.H. 1979. Marine turtles in Papua New Guinea. Report on a consultancy, Wildlife Division, Konedobu, PNG. 122 p.

SCHULZ, J.P. 1975. Sea turtles nesting in Surinam. Zoologische Verhandelingen 143: 1-143.

SUGANUMA, H., A. YUSUF, Y. BAKARBESSY & M. KIYOTA. 2005. New leatherback conservation project in Papua, Indonesia. Marine Turtle Newsletter 109:8.