Recovery Plan for Marine Turtles in Australia
Specific Objective B.Specific Objective B.
Start here
Get a plain-English read of Specific Objective B.
Turn the raw legal text into a practical explanation grounded in Recovery Plan for Marine Turtles in Australia.
Specific Objective B.
| Develop programs and protocols to monitor marine turtle populations in Australian waters, assess the size and status of those populations and the causes of their mortality, and address information gaps. |
|---|
Introduction
Long-term data sets for marine turtle populations are rare. The Queensland Turtle Research Project has provided much of the information identifying the continued decline of marine turtles in Australia, particularly the eastern Australian population of loggerhead turtles. The establishment of monitoring programs for key marine turtle populations is necessary to determine the status of marine turtles nationally, to detect change and to measure the effectiveness of management. Combined with a genetic analysis of the composition of populations on feeding grounds and the determination of the geographic range of breeding populations, key demographic parameters can be monitored over time to detect population trends. Adequate information will allow the development of future recovery plans based on population trends rather than the amelioration of threats.
Recent work has been able to identify genetically discrete populations of marine turtles in Australian waters and those of near neighbours in the Asia/Pacific region (Moritz et.al. 1998a). This allows the partitioning of some species into management units (Moritz et.al. 1998b). The Recovery Team recognises that to complete this picture it may be necessary to visit neighbouring countries to establish the level of harvest of Australian populations through the analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). This will enable management regimes between nations to be harmonised through agreed arrangements.
The educational benefits of monitoring can be significant. If access to beaches is managed intensively and extension services provided there is a visible educational benefit in exposing people to nesting marine turtles. Mon Repos Conservation Park on Queensland’s Bundaberg coast demonstrates this (Kay 1995).