Go Kemp's Go!
A recent Houston Chronicle article, among others, noted the first Kemp's ridley nest of the season in Texas. Considering that until recently there were no Kemp's nesting in Texas, this sort of news always gives me hope. There is the general joy and happiness because it is one of many signs that the Kemp's population is recovering. Donna Shaver has been doing a great job of keeping us all up-to-date on the recovery status of Kemp's ridley in Texas (MTN42, MTN70, MTN74, MTN75, MTN82).
I also receive great joy from the thought that these early results may be proving wrong some of the reviews of the late 80's/early 90's that led to the eventual demise of the head-start program. I held no great love for the head-start program, but even as a new graduate student at the time, just cutting his teeth on turtles, I found many of the reasons and arguments put forward by those wanting to kill the program, short-sighted at best and a bit ridiculous at worst. I mean, come on! Arguing to kill a program that had been going on for about ten years at the time because of lack of results, when it was becoming increasingly clear that it takes Kemp's ridleys at least that long to reach maturity. Given that other reviewers suggested that a majority of the early graduates from the head-start program were males, it is not at all surprising that no adult head-started ridleys were seen on the nesting beach until the late 90's.
So at least now there are a few. If those few turn into a full-fledged nesting population in a few years ,or decades, or even centuries, then the millions of dollars that went into the program will be money well spent.
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Nicely put. Also, we need to put that dollar cost into perspective. Other management projects related to sea turtles are just as expensive, if not more so. For instance individual beach nourishment projects occur all over the east coast of the US every year, and each one usually costs tens of millions of dollars. I am not trying to debate whether nourishment or headstarting are valuable managment practices, but rather I wish to point out that there seems to be a lack of consistency in which are supported and which ones are not.
Posted by: matthew | April 24, 2003 06:07 PM
Sea turtles seem to be the same as most things, the available money is not always put to the best use. The business surrounding the Kemp's ridley "experiment" galled me in particular. The potential benefits of establishing another nesting population, for a species that was on the brink of extinction and had no other known nesting beach than Rancho Nuevo, are just astounding. One decent act of nature and the whole shootin' match is gone!
I also found it quite humerous how careful (early political correctness?) everyone was to refer to the program as an "experiment". If those involved in the program even came close to calling it a full-fledged recovery effort in public there's no telling how quickly it would have been shut down. Well, the folks that ran the program and fought to keep it going as long as they did should be proud of what they accomplished.
My general sense of the whole thing is that there were a few folks that had a bug in their butts about the program, for reasons I still can't fathom, and were basically looking for an excuse to shut it down.
Posted by: Michael | April 25, 2003 10:16 PM