Gainesville.com
Article published Aug 28, 2005


MELBOURNE BEACH - Sea turtles face an uphill battle for survival beyond just dragging their bulky bodies up beaches to lay eggs.

First, the eggs must survive storms and poachers in the weeks before hatching. Then the hatched turtles need to avoid the distraction of artificial lights before making their way into the ocean.

Even if they get that far, only about one in 10,000 baby turtles gets past sharks and other predators to survive into adulthood.

Now, environmental groups say sea turtles face another threat, this one of the man-made variety: the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.

A proposal in Congress would spell the most significant changes to the act in its nearly 32-year history. Proponents say the changes would protect the rights of private property owners while maintaining protections for wildlife.

But some sea-turtle advocates say the act already protects species without being an undo burden on property owners and there's no better example than the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. They say the act has prompted recovery plans boosting the number of turtle nesting sites there to record highs.

The act has "done great things for sea turtles," said David Godfrey, executive director of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation and Sea Turtle Survival League. The Gainesville-based group studies and protects sea turtles from the Florida coast to Central America.

Godfrey said the Archie Carr refuge intermixes protected lands with private property on the border island off Melbourne.

"As children play in their yards, endangered species are getting ready to nest in their backyards," he said.

Sea turtles are large, air-breathing reptiles that live in the water but return to land to lay eggs. Three species of sea turtles - green, leatherback and loggerhead turtles - nest on the refuge's beaches.

Green and leatherback turtles are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, which means they're in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future. Loggerheads are listed as threatened, meaning they're likely to become endangered.

The act creates penalties for harming listed species; puts restrictions on altering their habitat; requires the federal government to craft plans for their recovery and puts other protections on species and their range.

Of the 1,268 species listed as endangered or threatened under the act since 1973, nine species have gone extinct and 16 species have been fully recovered, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Resources Committee, said the low number of recovered species shows the act isn't working.

The act "is a failed program that checks species in and doesn't check them out," said Pombo spokesman Brian Kennedy.

He said the representative wants to raise the bar for the science being used to put species on the list, reduce the size of protected habitat, compensate landowners who can't develop land due to the presence of listed species and make other changes to the act.

Pombo plans to introduce his proposal late next month. In anticipation, environmental groups are gearing up efforts to fight the plan.

"The act doesn't need to be fixed, changed, improved or modernized," said Cynthia Frisch of the Pegasus Foundation, a group working to improve the welfare of animals.

The act's success in recovering the bald eagle and American alligator would have never happened if Pombo's changes were in effect, she said.

Green turtles were on the brink of extinction in the United States in the early 1980s, said Llew Ehrhart, a biology professor at the University of Central Florida who studies sea turtles. He credits the Endangered Species Act and related recovery efforts as leading to a recent resurgence.

"Those chickens have come home to roost now," he said.

Green and leatherback turtles have already set record highs this year for nesting sites in the Archie Carr refuge, he said. While loggerhead nesting sites had been in a six-year decline, the numbers rebounded this year.

In 1990, Congress created the refuge, which was named after the late turtle expert from the University of Florida. Since that time, the refuge has used private and government money to piece together protected land amid rapid development in Brevard and Indian River counties.

Students at the University of Central Florida, led by Ehrhart, now patrol those beaches for research purposes. Through the night, the students... see URL for entire story: