Turtles News

KATHMANDU — In 2002, the black softshell turtle was declared extinct in the wild — not a difficult assessment to make, given that, back then, the only known population of…

Sea turtles lumber from ocean to shore to lay their eggs in the sand. In some places, this effort is protected by humans who patrol beaches on foot, warding off…

KATHMANDU — When conservationist Bed Bahadur Khadka roamed the banks of the Rapti River near Chitwan National Park to monitor gharials released from a breeding center in August 2020, he…

WEST SUMBAWA, Indonesia — “Gentlemen present in the room — have you ever eaten turtle eggs?” This was how Musyafirin, the head of West Sumbawa district in Indonesia’s West Nusa…

A hawksbill turtle’s protective shell is in some ways its greatest weakness. Exquisitely patterned and thick enough to sculpt, hawksbill shells are the most popular type of tortoiseshell, a material…

Before the inhabitants of Itsamia in Comoros decided to intervene, turtles arriving to nest on its beaches drew villagers from neighboring hamlets. Anywhere from 10 to 30 green sea turtles…

MARERENI, Kenya — One day in April, at a few minutes past six in the morning, the sun’s golden rays lit up the sea on Kenya’s coast. A few early-rising…

Conservation biologist Estrela Matilde has won the 2022 Whitley Award for her work to save sea turtles on the island of Príncipe in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. The awards, often…

New conservation efforts for critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles are starting to make a difference in the status of global hawksbill populations, although the continued illegal trade of tortoiseshell in…

Leatherback sea turtles run a gantlet of fishing lines and other human impacts during their annual migratory loop from Caribbean nesting grounds to the eastern coast of North America and…

Mayra Estrella’s father always spoke to her about sea turtles. Growing up, she remembers hearing stories linking a pair of turtles to the very existence of the Comcáac people, the…

On a late November day in the Kampong Seila district of Cambodia’s Preah Sihanouk province, 51 critically endangered freshwater turtles swam into the warm waters of the Sre Ambel River,…

POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — On a moonlit night in September, hundreds of sea turtles have crawled out of the sea to nest on Poilão Island. A team of turtle monitors…

POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — Castro Barbosa's eyes still light up when he recalls the first time he saw a sea turtle, in 1993. He was on a visit to Guinea-Bissau's…

As climate change worsens, sea turtles on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf seaboards, and in other coastal areas around the world, are increasingly at risk from cold-stunning events. But rescuers often await.

It’s six in the morning and the beach is empty. The tide has erased the footprints from the sand, and the surface is a blank slate of white and perfectly…

POILÃO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau — As night falls, the only lights visible on uninhabited Poilão Island are the nearly full moon and the eerie red glow beaming from a few headlamps.…

All seven sea turtle species are already endangered. Now humanity’s overshoot of planetary boundaries — climate change, ocean acidification, pollution and more — is upping the ante. Can turtles, people and conservation adapt?

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Beaches across the planet emptied as COVID-19 spread in 2020, with the first full lockdowns in many places coinciding with sea turtle nesting season. With less noise,…

Within months of newly discovered species of snakes, geckos and turtles being described (along with their locations) by scientists, traders find and harvest the animals for sale on the Internet.

After spending two months incubating in eggs, it’s time for green sea turtles to break out of their shells. The newly hatched reptiles scale the steep sides of their nests…

Clear-skied, low-wind summer days are rare off the coast of California. But they’re a blessing if you’re a researcher tracking down critically endangered leatherback sea turtles. Marine ecologists Scott Benson…

Many marine megafauna share a similar behavior of swimming in circles, often when in search of food, but also while engaged in a range of other activities, according to a…

In May, female turtles will start emerging from the Mediterranean onto the shores of Turkey, Greece and Libya, as well as onto islands such as Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. They…

Countless of them were massacred over centuries, and their eggs pilfered by the hundreds of millions. Today, the Arrau turtle is a rare species conservation success story in the Brazilian…

Early on the morning of Sept. 16, 2018, an olive ridley sea turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) hauled herself out of the ocean along a beach on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. Moving…

COLOMBO — Conservation experts in Sri Lanka have been left puzzled by a recent spate of marine turtle fatalities, where the animals’ bodies have washed ashore without any indications of…

The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest’s biodiversity — a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the…

Once considered extinct, the Burmese roofed turtle (Batagur trivittata) was brought back from the brink by an ambitious conservation program. Now, almost 30 years after its rediscovery in the wild,…

While MRN, a mining firm makes big profits working within, and harming, a Brazilian conservation unit, traditional people can be fined for collecting Brazil nuts and fishing sustainably in a nearby protected area.