Press Release: Give a Dollar; Save a Sea Turtle

SCOTTSDALE, AZ, 25 March 2013 – Give a dollar; save a turtle. This appeal for donors to dip into their pockets to save creatures who stick out their necks comes from SEE Turtles’ Billion Baby Turtles Campaign www.billionbabyturtles.org. This simple but powerful effort that seeks to help reverse the decline of endangered sea turtles around the world over the next decade.

The short-term goal is to raise $50,000 to save 50,000 hatchlings through the end of 2013, with increasing goals in coming years. To date, more than 30,000 baby turtles have been rescued at important turtle nesting beaches in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Funding to date has primarily gone to support hawksbill turtles in the Eastern Pacific, perhaps the world’s most endangered sea turtle population, as well as critically endangered leatherback turtles in Costa Rica. So far in 2013, the campaign has raised more than $20,000.

Ocean conservationist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols said the organization seeks to raise monies through individual donations, business sponsorships, school fundraisers, and sea turtle conservation tours promoted by the organization. 100% of individual donations will go to sea turtle conservation programs; SEE Turtles will not take any overhead from those gifts. Partners already enlisted include Endangered Species Chocolate, Nature’s Path Foods, and CauseBars.

“Odds are long for a baby sea turtle, even under the best of circumstances. But with all the human activities added to the mix, survival is a challenge. Survival to maturity may be as low as one in a thousand. That's why we are raising the bar and aspire to save a billion baby turtles--because that's what's needed now,” said Dr. Nichols. Six out of seven species of sea turtles around the world are endangered or threatened due to poaching of eggs and turtles, getting caught in fishing gear, and several other threats.

Monies help fund local residents and researchers to patrol sea turtle nesting beaches and bring eggs to protected hatcheries through community-based organizations at key sites. The goal is to save 20,000 Eastern Pacific hawksbill hatchlings (approximately 90 percent of the population’s hatchlings) in El Salvador and Nicaragua, 10,000 leatherback hatchlings in Costa Rica, 10,000 green turtle hatchlings in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and 10,000 olive ridley hatchlings in Nicaragua, with numbers increasing in subsequent years as more international projects are added to the list.

To determine which conservation projects receive funding, SEE Turtles has created a set of criteria including the status of the species, the importance of the nesting beach, and the level of community involvement. For more information on the program and how it works, please visit www.BillionBabyTurtles.org.
 
About SEE Turtles

SEE Turtles is an innovative project working to support community-based turtle conservation projects around Latin America through conservation tourism, volunteer recruiting, fundraising, and educational programs. Since its launch, the non-profit ecotourism project has generated nearly $400,000 in support for turtle organizations and local communities through donations, tour fees, spending in local businesses, and in-kind contributions. They have connected 200 volunteers with partners who have completed more than 2,000 work shifts at a dozen nesting beach projects. It is a pilot project and primary focus of SEEtheWILD, the world’s first non-profit wildlife conservation travel project. Both SEEtheWILD and SEE Turtles are part of The Ocean Foundation.

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For more information please contact

Brad Nahill

Director & Co-Founder

SEE Turtles & SEEtheWILD

brad@seeturtles.org

www.SEEturtles.org

800-854-4204