engaged with a total of 4,665 people via both onsite
activities and offsite presentations. Skype in the
Classroom lectures were provided to students from
a wide variety of countries, including Sweden, Egypt
and Brazil, and the free ‘Turtle Tracker App’
developed by the Gnaraloo Wilderness Foundation
enabled members of the public to share the travels
of the two turtles fitted with satellite trackers. Until
2016-17, all of the GTCP’s outreach activities were
provided free of charge to participants. Due to
decreased funding, onsite visitors were asked for
small financial contributions in season 2017-18.
So what now? Well, quite simply (and inexplicably),
there is no funding from private or public sources for
the continuation of this work. This means that the 30
-year consecutive baseline data set of Loggerhead
Turtle nesting in the Gnaraloo Bay Rookery survey
area will be broken and lost. Field teams will no
longer be able to rescue stranded turtles during the
nesting period, and monitoring of feral predators will
Left: two turtles fitted with satellite trackers in
December 2017 travelled more that 4,000 kilometres to
their foraging grounds.
Above and insert: at Gnaraloo the number of turtle
nests has remained consistent despite general
declines noted elsewhere.
Images courtesy of Karen Hattingh, Gnaraloo Turtle
Conservation Program.
cease, which means any increase in predation will
be impossible to assess and may go unnoticed.
Plus thousands of school children and members of
the public will be unenlightened about the plight of
sea turtles and the comprehensive and co-ordinated
efforts necessary for effective conservation.
And just how valuable is this work? The Loggerhead
Turtle is shackled by a prolonged generation time
(females may be at least 30 years old before they
first reproduce), low natural recruitment and total
reliance upon scattered nesting beaches. Their
fragile ecology renders the species especially
vulnerable to a suite of threats including human
consumption, commercial fishing, development,
pollution, climate change and exotic or displaced