Written by Leilane Marinho
Monday, 26 September 2011 09:25
"You can tell by the smell." The smoke insistently coming from the barbecued shell on coal, the way you cook the turtle-of-the-Amazon, still appreciated in the north of Brazil, is the sign that the number of females captured at the time of spawning in Praia Alta, Rondônia, state of the Brazilian Amazon, is not small. "They are eating turtle as never before", says Eduardo Bissagio, environmental analyst of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (Ibama), in Porto Velho. The capturing has been taking place due to lack of supervision and the closure of an Ibama office in the very area of a project that had been successfully operating for over 30 years.
Turtles of the Amazon Project
Besides Goiás, the project extends to all states that make up the Legal Amazon (Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Roraima, Rondônia, Tocantins, Pará, Mato Grosso and Maranhão). In 2007 it was present in about fifteen spots of the Amazon and Araguaia basins.
Besides Goiás, the project extends to all states that make up the Legal Amazon (Acre, Amazonas, Amapá, Roraima, Rondônia, Tocantins, Pará, Mato Grosso and Maranhão). In 2007 it was present in about fifteen spots of the Amazon and Araguaia basins.
One of the bases of the Turtles of the Amazon Project (QAP) is in Praia Alta, Guaporé River, on the border between Brazil and Bolivia. In the region there are large concentrations of Podocnemis expansa, the largest freshwater turtle in South America – it can grow up to 80 centimetres long and weigh 60 kilograms. There are at least 60 thousand females of the species in reproductive age throughout Brazil. In 2010, the project had six thousand nests of the species and, in Praia Alta, 600 thousand babies have been released. Although the past numbers, mismanagement of scarce resources has resulted in lack of supervision and what is there today is a hunting festival of an animal that should be protected by the Ibama.
The turtle nesting also faces another problem: the deactivation of Ibama’s Regional Office in Costa Marques, part of a project which offered educational activities such as lectures and public events. Due to the decision, the site no longer has a museum of environmental education or tanks of live turtles for public sight.
Quoted in virtually every tourist guide in the state, the office established itself as a visitors center that had researchers and tourists coming from Brazil and the world. Asked about the closure of the office, Luis César Guimarães, superintendent of the Ibama in Rondonia, answered that it needs to sort out "outstanding issues with suppliers". "The ones that make a living out of destroying the environment will benefit from it. Because we have been left without supervision, everywhere you go all that is been talked about is the consumption of turtles", says João José da Silva, who at age 50, completed 21 of service to the Ibama in Costa Marques.
Priority in theory
2007 was supposed to be a positive landmark for the Project, the year that the Ministry of Environment (MMA) considered Praia Alta as one of the High Priority Areas for Conservation, Sustainable Use and Biodiversity Benefits Sharing, a region of extremely high importance. However, "as it is not a priority for the federal government, there will never be enough money for development of such projects. Despite the planning, the fauna is the one that suffers the impacts of budget cuts. If we technicians hadn’t had perseverance for the past three decades, the turtles would have surely already made the list of endangered species", said Antonio Pacaya Ihuaraqui, deputy project coordinator and Ibama’s environmental analyst.
He explains that the Turtles of the Amazon project must undergo some changes. "We want to be model of sustainability, to have ongoing environmental education activities, sustainable technologies, inter-institutional communication, integrated supervision, research". This is if the assigned budged and public good will were to allow inspection to happen. Otherwise, turtle illegal hunting could continue.
Ecological value
Turtles eat plant material and turn them into a source of energy for other species, as explained by Richard Vogt, a researcher at the National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA) and director in chief of the Amazon Turtle Project, based in Manaus. "One of the Amazon-turtle lays an average of 100 to 150 eggs per year. These eggs replenish the environment with more turtles and serve as a food source for carnivores such as birds, dolphins, alligators, fish, leopards", he says.
Illegal hunting destroys the biological equilibrium. "If a man eats spawning females, it will take at least 12 years for sub-adult animals to reach maturity. The loss in turtles’ population stock that are nesting is only recovered 30 years later", he says.
There is still no estimate on the number of lost females this year in High Beach, but late spawning is expected due to the movement of vessels and mainly due to the movement of hunters. The delay at birth results in death of the offspring, who drown in the rising sea level.
Quem Somos
((o))eco e ((o)) eco Amazonia são feitos pela Associação O Eco, uma organização brasileira que se preza por não ter fins lucrativos nem vinculação com partidos políticos, empresas ou qualquer tipo de grupo de interesse. Leia mais. Leia mais.
