India’s sea turtles lose out in tourism battle FT.com Jo Johnson February 28 2006 02:00
From the tracks they discovered on the sands of Morjim Bay later that morning, forestry officials in Goa knew the endangered turtle had a traumatic nocturnal homecoming. After riding in on the high tide before dawn on December 15, the shortsighted Olive Ridley crept up the beach where it was born, once deserted but now one of India’s most popular, in search of a secluded spot to unload its precious cargo. It bumped into deckchairs, bar stools and umbrellas before lying down in a daze, exhausted by the long swim from deep-sea feeding grounds, on the first open stretch of sand it could find. There, between two tourist bars, “Planet Hollywood” and “Hard Rock Cafe”, the heart-shaped reptile dug a 50cm hole, deposited 131 tennis ball-sized eggs, covered them with sand and swam away, never to see them again. Just six Olive Ridleys returned to nest at Morjim this season, down from 31 in 2001. The solitary landings contrast with the awesome arribadas (arrivals) shown in nature documentaries, in which nesting turtles storm beaches in their thousands in a tactic known as predator saturation. The only species that now arrives en masse at Morjim in the September-March nesting season is the sun-starved northern European tourist. Marine biologists say the steep decline in nesting turtles is linked to unregulated coastal development. With the tourism season coinciding with the nesting season, Goa no longer provides a safe habitat for turtles. Eggs need to incubate undisturbed for 50 days before hatchlings break out under cover of darkness and, guided by the reflection of stars on the waves, make a dash to the sea. It is just over 20 years since the first direct charter flight from Britain touched down in Goa at a palm-fringed airport run by the Indian navy near the Mandovi river. Goa’s transformation from hippy paradise to mid-market package destination has accelerated in the last two years, with the former Portuguese colony becoming one of the most popular destinations for British wintertourists. The country’s award-winning “Incredible India” campaign is contributing to an explosion in visitors to India - up 24 per cent in 2004 to 3.4m - and Goa is very much in the frontline of the battle for package tourists. It is rushing to put in place tourist infrastructure: hastily erected budget hotels are crammed with Britons, who last year outnumbered Germans, the next largest group, by six to one. New signs in Morjim, however, are in Russian, reflecting the surge in neo-hippies from the former Soviet Union washing up on the Goan coastline. “They drink too much, make problem,” says a driver at the Nilaya Hermitage, a luxury boutique hotel in the hills above the famous ravers’ beach of Anjuna. India is also now aggressively marketing Goa to Chinese tour operators. “Artificial lighting from beach bars and hotels confuses the hatchlings and makes them run inland towards roads and cars,” says Sameer Dhurat, 21, one of half a dozen villagers employed by Goa’s forestry department as turtle guards during the nesting season. He is paid Rs2,500 (€48) a month for his work, which principally involves trying to stop locals digging up the eggs and cooking them. The forestry department has been fighting a losing battle to keep the beaches and dunes free of deckchairs and other encroachments. The proliferation of restaurants, many with names that allude to the Olive Ridley, has forced the department to take drastic measures. Vishwanath Bugde, a forestry officer in Morjim, ordered the eggs laid next to the Planet Hollywood to be moved to safer ground in the dunes, where they were fenced off. When they hatched on February 3 he helped carry the tiny turtles to the sea. “The lights from Chapora [a nearby town] are so bright the turtles try to go there rather than out to sea so it’s easiest if we carry them,” says Aarom Lobo, a marine biologist who had waited for three nights for the hatchlings to emerge. The tourism industry in Goa is undoubtedly hastening the moment when the Olive Ridley no longer returns to Morjim, or neighbouring beaches such as Arambol and Mandrem, which are already choked by development. “This year we tried to shut the bars down, but they are on tourism department land and there was nothing we could do,” says Mr Bugde. “They’re supposed to turn off the lights at 6pm and bring in the decks, but they don’t. All they are doing is making money on the back of the turtle.” The same conflict between India’s rapid economic development and its precarious environment is jeopardising the far larger Olive Ridley population in the eastern state of Orissa. Greenpeace, the environmental group, is opposing the construction of a port by Tata Steel at Dhamra, next to the Gahirmatha National Park, that it claims will permanently damage one of the world’s last big sea turtle nesting grounds. ~(^^)~ Avelino
