The UK-based Whitley Fund for Nature awarded Joanna Alfaro-Shigueto, an MTSG member from Lima (Peru), with one of the world’s most prestigious wildlife conservation awards – the Whitley Award.
The results were announced during a ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society in May, at which the Whitley Fund for Nature’s patron, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal (Princess Anne) presented the prizes. Continue reading
We are pleased to report that the Red List Assessment of the Hawaiian subpopulation of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) has been accepted by IUCN. As detailed in our last post, the final assessment of the Hawaiian green turtle concluded a status of Least Concern for this subpopulation. This status is a testament to the decades of collaborative research and conservation in Hawaii that allowed the population to recover, and gives hope to the recovery of depleted marine turtle populations in other parts of the world. The final assessment is available on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Website (Update: IUCN is currently experiencing technical difficulties with their website. In the meantime you may download the PDF here). Continue reading
A version of a Red List Assessment of the Hawaiian subpopulation of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) was completed by Nicolas Pilcher, Milani Chaloupka, and Erin Woods and submitted by the MTSG to IUCN for consideration late last year. This followed a review of the draft assessment by the entire MTSG and the Assessment Steering Committee, and multiple rounds of revision.
The IUCN Red List Office recently provided comments on the draft 2011 assessment and considered that our conclusion of a Near Threatened status was not consistent with the restricted area of habitat assessment criterion used in the draft assessment. We had erred on the side of caution by concluding Near Threatened but on further reflection we have now revised the assessment given a more detailed consideration of the assessment Criterion B. Continue reading
UPDATE (1/30/2012): After review by IUCN, the Red List Assessment of Hawaiian green turtles has been revised and is pending re-submission. See this post for details.
The final version of a Red List Assessment of the Hawaiian subpopulation of green turtles (Chelonia mydas) was completed by Nicolas Pilcher, Milani Chaloupka, and Erin Woods and submitted by the MTSG to IUCN for consideration this week. This follows a review of the draft assessment by the entire MTSG and the Assessment Steering Committee, and multiple rounds of revision. Continue reading
We are pleased to announce the results of the first comprehensive status assessment of all sea turtle populations globally in a paper published today in the journal PLoS ONE. The study, designed to provide a blueprint for marine turtle conservation and research, evaluated the risk and status of each of the 58 marine turtle “Regional Management Units” and determined the 11 most threatened populations (listed below), as well as the 12 healthiest populations, and 12 “critical data needs.” The full paper is available here. Continue reading
