Historic drought made it difficult to rescue endangered Amazonian turtle eggs

The historic drought suffered by Amazon since September made it difficult to rescue the eggs of turtles threatened in the largest rainforest in the world, but it did not stop activists fighting to save the species in Brazil They will commemorate the release this weekend of 800 baby chelonians.

The release of the small chelonians in an environmental reserve cut by the Amazon River was the result of an initiative to convert dozens of inhabitants of the riverside communities in the region, who previously dedicated themselves to hunting turtles, into monitors specialized in the Search for the threatened eggs and rescue them.

The 800 babies were released on a beach in the Negro River, as the Amazon is known in Brazil, before joining the Solimoes, within the Jaú National Park environmental reserve, about 195 kilometers from Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon. . Quickly, and instinctively, they ran to the river to begin their adult lives.

The project for the training of environmental agents is a joint initiative of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), dependent on the Ministry of the Environment, as well as the organization Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the US Agency .US for International Development (USAID).

The project allowed the training as environmental agents of 115 inhabitants of fishing and gathering villages in three environmental reserves in Amazonas, the largest state in the Brazilian Amazon and of which Manaus is the capital.

The new monitors live in three communities in the Jaú National Park, in eight in the Río Unini Extraction Reserve, and in four in the Capanã Gande Extraction Reserve.

Geographic diversity allows the initiative to have agents to protect turtle nests and rescue threatened eggs both in the lower region of the Negro River and in the region where the Purus flows into the Madeira.

The monitors began monitoring the nesting areas in September 2023, when the chelonians begin to spawn on the beaches of the lower Negro River.

The monitors monitored the spawning areas to prevent them from being attacked by predators or by hunters who trade them, and collected the threatened eggs to be cared for in artificial nests at an ICMBio base.

The ease had a special meaning this year because the historic drought in the Amazon, intensified by the El Niño phenomenon and climate change, threatened rescue efforts, as it made access difficult to some regions where the level of The rivers fell to their minimum.

The drought also increased the size of the beaches and consequently the area that has to be monitored.

According to chelonian specialist Camila Ferrara, a WCS researcher, the extreme heat of recent months also cooked the eggs in the sand and caused the death of the embryos.

Among those released are turtles of four species: the charapa arrau (“Podocnemis expansa), which is the best-known chelonian in the Amazon, the cupiso (“Podocnemis sextuberculata”), the chipire (“Podocnemis erythrocephala”) and the terecai (“Podocnemis unifilis”).

These are some of the species most threatened with extinction due to the high value of their eggs and meat in the communities that consume them.

Of the 16 species of river turtles known in the Amazon, 11 suffer some degree of threat, both due to the illegal trafficking of their meat and eggs and due to other factors such as deforestation, climate change, the construction of hydroelectric plants or breeding. of livestock in nesting areas.