Plan hatched to move turtle eggs from oil spill

[highplainsdem]

Source: Reuters

Plan hatched to move turtle eggs from oil spill
By Steve Gorman


LOS ANGELES, June 28 (Reuters) - U.S. wildlife experts are preparing to collect tens of thousands of endangered sea turtle eggs and move them hundreds of miles away in an unprecedented bid to protect them from the BP Plc (BP.N) (BP.L) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Plans call for relocating 700 to 800 clutches of eggs left newly buried on the sandy beaches of Alabama and northwestern Florida -- accounting for the bulk of turtle nests in the northern Gulf, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Charles Underwood said on Monday.

"Relocating sea turtle nests on occasion, nest by nest, in very small numbers, has been done before (but) nothing has even been considered at this massive scale," Underwood told Reuters. "It's never been attempted anywhere in the world."

Most of the nests designated for removal are those of the loggerhead turtle, the world's largest hard-shelled turtle, growing to an average adult weight of 250 pounds (113 kg). The loggerhead is the most prevalent of five species of threatened or endangered sea turtles that inhabit the U.S. Gulf Coast.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2811069020100629

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The article says they'll also be including "a handful of nests" from other turtle species.

[Submariner]

1. The turtles will not be coming back to those beaches again

anyway, so this is a good life saving gesture for this crop of critters, a least. They would have otherwise died returning to sea via the Gulf. Our generation is witnessing the death of an entire coastal ecosystem. Crashing biodiversity, and a toxic soup for those that hang on the longest.

[friedgreentomatoes]

2. Is that title for real?

I meant to reply to the OP :P

[Politicalboi]

3. Glad to hear this

I was wondering if they were going to just let them crawl to their death.