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As has become the custom, the MTSG held its annual general meeting at the ISTS Annual Sea Turtle Symposium, this year held in Loreto, BCS, Mexico. The AGM was split into two sessions: In the first, Co-Chair Rod Mast presented a brief overview of key issues, including a summary of progress on Red Listing, followed by summaries by the Regional Vice-Chairs on pertinent MTSG-related activities in their respective regions. Notes from this session can be found at the MTSG website <http://www.iucn-mtsg.org>. In a separate session, Co-Chair Nick Pilcher presented an overview of the Dhamra Port / MTSG relationship and led a discussion of the MTSG’s involvement in that project. For readers who were not present in Loreto, we provide herein a synopsis of Nick’s presentation, and an update on what has occurred in the ensuing months since the Annual General Meeting.

History of MTSG involvement at Dhamra. To understand the full history, one needs to see IUCN’s larger picture involvement in industry relations. The IUCN Secretariat was asked by its members at the IUCN World Congress in Jordan in 2000 to develop a framework for involving the private sector more in conservation activities. The Secretariat was given a mandate to develop Terms of Reference under which such engagements would be sanctioned as IUCN activities. At the 2004 Congress in Bangkok, the Terms of Reference were approved by the same membership and the IUCN Secretariat was tasked with implementing a business and biodiversity programme that engaged the private sector in a responsible manner, one which would build on IUCN’s strengths and commitment to conservation.

So it was that in 2006, that the TATA Group approached IUCN for some assistance through the Asia Regional Office. At this point IUCN did not engage with the company immediately. A company audit was conducted of the TATA group by IUCN HQ, following which it was decided to engage in a dialogue to determine where things might lead. At this point the Asia Regional Office contacted the Chair of the SSC, who contacted The Co-Chairs of the MTSG. Rod was busy, so Nick went along to India on the first scoping mission. Contrary to what many readers may have heard, there was plenty of consultation between the Asia Regional Office and IUCN members in India, and Nick contacted members of our MTSG there at that time. Nobody has disagreed in any major way with the appraisal of the physical situation and history of the issue, reinforcing the fact that IUCN had all done its homework. Since that time, the MTSG has worked closely with the IUCN Asia Regional Office to address the development at Dhamra.

What was learned at Dhamra. After visiting the site it was clear that a port was going to be built. They had no intention of stopping, certainly not for IUCN. While there is a case pending at the Supreme Court filed by an NGO in India; this is up to the Courts and not for IUCN to decide upon. How the case at the courts will fare is not worth pondering at this stage, but there is no evidence to suggest there is a catastrophe in the making with regard to marine turtles. Impacts, yes, but a catastrophe? Not likely. The truth is that turtles and ports do coexist: all along the US coasts, from the Gulf of Mexico through the Atlantic; in Brisbane; in Gabon; in Western Australia. Pretty much everywhere there are turtles there are ports of one kind or another. Just 60 km south of Dhamra is Paradeep, another port, and there have been no turtle catastrophes there. Many of the potential impacts of ports can be mitigated, and it is hard to argue against development in a needy country in the face of limited impact.

Given this, IUCN and the MTSG Co-Chairs felt that sitting back and watching a port built without taking into account the turtles was worse than sitting idly by and waiting on the legal actions of local NGOs. Five or even ten years from now the case will likely still be in the courts, but the port will have dredged 6.5 million cubic meters of seabed, erected lighting, and secondary development will have exceeded even what the port plans on doing. It bears clarifying that IUCN was not responsible for supporting or rejecting the Dhamra proposal. Rather, IUCN was requested to assist with mitigation of potential impacts by a project already under development, and they indeed have the required expertise and mandate to do just that.

Actions underway. The Asia Regional Office, in collaboration with the SSC and the MTSG, developed a preliminary plan to help the Port get things right. The initial two key concerns were the dredging operations and the lighting around the port. Following a trip to the site in December, the dredging is now being overseen by some of the best folks in the world: from the US Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA. In March, another team travelled to the site again to look into mitigating the impacts of the lighting. During that trip we also had meetings with the fishermen’s cooperative association, in an effort to start solving the trawling bycatch problems. The Port has exceeded every single request we have made in the name of conservation - far above the way many developers usually try to wriggle out of environmental commitments. The IUCN/MTSG team are also working with the Orissa state government to push forward lighting legislation so that secondary developments are also forced to be as careful as the port.

And that is where things stand today. The MTSG draws on its expertise to provide world-class solutions balancing out the threat of industrial development. And today, this is seen as a model project and a great example of potential linkages between the private sector and IUCN, linking the Asia Regional Office, the Business and Biodiversity Programme and the Species Survival Commission of the IUCN (SSC) in support of IUCN’s vision of a ‘One Programme’.

Launch of State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT) Report Vol. 3

The MTSG was a founding partner in the SWOT Initiative in 2003, and continues to play an important role in many aspects of SWOT’s work. SWOT Report 3 was publicly launched in late January at the 28th Annual Sea Turtle Symposium in Loreto, Mexico (and simultaneously launched online at <http://www.seaturtlestatus.org>, and it has been enthusiastically received. This issue features the most current global map of hawksbill nesting sites, plus articles about all seven sea turtle species and the progress being made around the world in protecting their ocean habitats. The Report also features a beautiful photo gallery created in conjunction with the International League of Conservation Photographers.

The award-winning SWOT Report has become a popular tool for the sea turtle conservation community, and especially for the education, outreach, fundraising, and scientific efforts of the 200+ data contributors and partners that make up the SWOT Team. The launch gleaned substantial news coverage highlighting one of the Report’s featured articles -- the “longest recorded migration of any ocean-going vertebrate” (page 17) – about a leatherback that travelled 12,744 miles from Indonesia to Oregon! This news was covered by the Daily Telegraph (UK), National Geographic.com, El Comercio (Ecuador), the Oregonian (USA) and a variety of other media outlets in the USA, Thailand, India, and Peru.

The broader SWOT Initiative continues to make major strides towards its long-term goals as well, some of which are highlighted below:

Improving the quality of SWOT data – With support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, SWOT convened a technical meeting in Loreto that brought together some of the sea turtle community’s leaders in statistics to help define minimum standards for inclusion of data in the SWOT data-base and maps. Enormous progress was made during this 3-day workshop, and the team (Col Limpus, Marc Girondot, Andrea Whiting, Rod Mast, Brian Hutchinson, Nick Pilcher, Bryan Wallace, Jeff Seminoff, Suzanne Livingstone, Alec Hutchinson, Alberto Abreu, and Michelle Pico, among others) has begun testing a computer modelling program that calculates numbers of nesting turtles from scant data sets, allowing for accurate comparability within determined levels of confidence. Bryan Wallace recently joined the SWOT Family as the full-time Science Advisor to CI’s Sea Turtle Flagship Program, and he will help spearhead these efforts.

SWOT Outreach Grants – After the publication of SWOT Report 1 in 2006, a small grants program was created to support community outreach efforts using the SWOT Report to engage local people in creative ways, educate threat communities, and empower individuals to make behavioral changes that will stem the hazards to sea turtles and their habitats. Five $1000 grants were made to projects in Sierra Leone, Malaysia, Guyana and Bangladesh, and the stories of their success were published in SWOT Report 2. Another round of grants was made the following year in Nicaragua, Lebanon, Micronesia, Honduras and India; and SWOT has just selected 5 more grantees for 2008. Moreover, one SWOT grant recipient, a charismatic community leader and turtle conservationist from Sierra Leone, Mr. Eddie Aruna, received a special award of an all expenses paid trip to participate in the 28th Sea Turtle Symposium, where he was able to make face-to-face linkages with other sea turtle conservationists from around the world. This year’s grantees will receive a video camera as part of their award – a $140 “Flip Video” – that will allow them to film their projects and upload clips to an internet site called “Sea Turtle Tube,” thereby leveraging the outreach impact of these small grants even further.

MTSG Co-Chairs participate in first IUCN SSC Chairs Gathering

The first-ever meeting of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Specialist Group Chairs took place on 11-14 February 2008 in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. The meeting celebrated the enormous contributions made to global species conservation over the last six decades by the 7000+ volunteers of the SSC Network, and served to align the Chairs of the specialist groups around themes of common interest to all. Attended by 122 delegates - over 80 Specialist Group chairs as well as key IUCN Secretariat staff from headquarters and regions - the meeting addressed topics including the SSC design for the future, IUCN policy, the World Conservation Congress, tools for species and area-based conservation planning, communications, Red Listing and assessment work, and networking. The Chairs shared knowledge and experiences in ways that they have never been able to do in the past, and it was unanimously agreed that similar gatherings should take place in the future. Presentations were made on Conservation Fundraising by Rod Mast, and on the work of the MTSG and IUCN at Dhamra, India, by Nick Pilcher. For more information, and to see copies of the many excellent presentations, please go to: <http://cms.iucn.org>.