New York Times Editorial
September 27, 2007
For a while during the 1990s, it looked as though the loggerhead sea turtle might really be making a comeback. But a new federal report — a 5-year review that was mandated by the Endangered Species Act — suggests that loggerheads, which are listed as threatened, have begun to decline again. Their life-pattern makes them doubly vulnerable to humans. They lay their eggs on beaches, habitat vulnerable to development and disturbance, in places like South Florida and Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, and they spend their long lives at sea, where they are often fouled in fishing nets.
It is partly the longevity of these creatures that makes their death as bystanders among the global fishing fleets feel so tragic, a truly colossal waste of life. A loggerhead reaches sexual maturity at around 35. Some kinds of fishing, like shrimp trawl fishing, lend themselves to the use of turtle excluder devices, which help sea turtles escape from nets. But it takes regular enforcement to ensure that those devices are used, and enforcement is always in short supply when it comes to the environment. Much of the global fleet, which grows larger and larger, is beyond such enforcement in any case. For an oceanic species such as the loggerhead, these are incredibly dangerous times.
Like almost any threatened or endangered species, the loggerhead sea turtle raises a fundamental question about human will. The loggerhead has benefited from recovery plans, special legal status, the dedication of scientists and environmentalists and the general good will of the public. And yet all of this concerted human effort is required simply to restrain human economic activity — fishing especially — enough to allow this extraordinary species to share the planet with us. As always, in matters of species preservation, our efforts look as though they’re directed at nature, when in fact they’re really directed at ourselves.
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