Global challenges and priorities for interventions addressing illegal harvest, use and trade of marine turtles


LAUREN L. LO PES,AXEL PAULSCH and ANA NUNO


Abstract Worldwide, conservation initiatives have at- tempted to curb illegal harvest, use and trade of marine turtles at least since the 1950s. Despite some declines in lo- cal trade and consumption, these illegal activities are still often reported as a key threat to marine turtle populations. Reassessing and refining global conservation priorities for marine turtles allows us to formulate evidence-based strate- gies and effective interventions to address this threat. We surveyed a total of 103 marine turtle conservation research- ers and practitioners globally to understand how conserva- tion efforts can be better allocated to curb illegal harvest, use and trade. We explored the characteristics of these ille- gal activities, conservation priorities, challenges and lessons learnt. According to participants’ perceptions, progress has been achieved, but illegal harvest, use and trade remain pressing threats globally. Current challenges to addressing illegal activities relate to fisheries management, enforcement and legislation. Recommended priority actions include law and penalty enforcement, enhancing environmental liter- acy, awareness and stakeholder participation, and improv- ing local conservation leadership and onshore/maritime management based on research. Based on participants’ per- ceptions, we identify priorities for marine turtle conserva- tion interventions that aim to curb illegal harvest, use and trade. Given the challenges of obtaining reliable information on sensitive topics such as illegal harvest, use and trade, further work should seek to validate our findings through empirical research. Further work could also seek to compre- hend better how expert elicitation in conservation is influ- enced by individual experience, perspectives and goals.


Keywords CITES, conservation prioritization, expert elici- tation, hawksbill turtle, illegal take, sea turtle, sustainable use, wildlife trade


LAUREN L. LOPES (Corresponding author, AXEL PAULSCH ( orcid.org/0000-0001-5732-686X,


lauren.lopes@elitenetzwerk.de) University of Bayreuth, Faculty of Biology, Chemistry & Earth Sciences, 95440, Bayreuth, Germany


orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-5365) Institute for Biodiversity, Regensburg, Germany


ANA NUNO*( orcid.org/0000-0003-4680-2378) Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK


*Also at: Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal


Received 15 May 2020. Revision requested 17 June 2020. Accepted 15 October 2020. First published online 14 April 2022.


Supplementary material for this article is available at doi.org/10.1017/S0030605320001210


Introduction


(Nasi et al., 2011), but unsustainable and/or illegal resource use can threaten the social-ecological systems concerned. For millennia, people have harvested marine turtles and benefitted from their use (Frazier, 2005). However, over- exploitation and shifts from subsistence to commercial use, motivated by nutritional values, perceived health bene- fits, valued material properties (e.g. of the carapace and its scutes) or revenue from trade (Frazier, 2005; Barrios- Garrido et al., 2017) threaten the conservation of marine turtles (Donlan et al., 2010;Williams et al., 2019) by deplet- ing their populations. For example, international market demands during the 1950s–1970s caused the collapse of all marine turtle populations in Mexico (Mancini & Koch, 2009, and references therein). Impacts such as these have triggered international, na-


S


tional and local conservation efforts. By 1981, all marine tur- tle species were listed in Appendix I of CITES (2019) and thus international commercial trade became generally pro- hibited. Similar provisions also followed under other inter- governmental instruments, such as the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, in which, by 1986, all species except Natator depressus were listed in Appendix I, generally prohibiting take, and the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Con- servation of Sea Turtles, signed in 2001, which also generally prohibits domestic trade and intentional capture, retention or killing. In addition to governments ratifying such inter- national instruments and becoming bound to their pro- visions, many NGOs have also been trying to conserve marine turtle populations, at least since the 1950s (Mazaris et al., 2017). Despite global conservation efforts and some decline in


local trade and consumption (Boura et al., 2016; Hancock et al., 2017; Harrison et al., 2017; Quiñones et al., 2017), mar- ine turtle take remains a key threat in the North Atlantic, Caribbean, South-west Atlantic, Middle East, South-east Asia and East Pacific regions (Donlan et al., 2010; Marcovaldi et al., 2019; Nalovic et al., 2019; Phillott &


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2022, 56(4), 592–600 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320001210


ustainable use is key to maintaining healthy ecosystems and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them


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