Orissa turns turtle grave

I can never forget those wonderful turtle eggs that I hatched and released back to the sea years ago at the Neelankarai coast near Chennai ( as a school volunteer).

Here comes another case of Classic inaction,blame game. HT reports, " The blood of Olive Ridley sea turtles has again reddened Orissa's coastline. Over 2,000 carcasses of the endangered turtles have been found off the coast, a major wildlife organisation said.According to the NGO, Operation Kachhapa, the turtles were killed by mechanised fishing trawlers and the bodies dumped by farmers away from the site of death. The deaths put a question mark over conservation of the turtles, which are found in India only on the Orissa coast. Over 1.29 lakh turtles have died in the country in the last 13 years.

In Delhi, the ministry of environment and forest refused to comment, arguing the matter was a state subject. "At most, we can seek a report," a official said.Aghast at the deaths, environmentalists are blaming the government for ignoring the warning signals.

"Incidents of turtles being killed due to the use of deep water trawlers have been on the rise in the last 10 years. We have asked both the environment ministry and Orissa government to stop deep-water trawlers within 10 kilometres of the coast. But it has not happened. The trawlers not only kill the fish and turtles near the coast, they also destroy the bio-mass that supports them," said Blinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India.

Biswajit Mohanty, coordinator of Operation Kachhapa, was scathing of government inaction, alleging that endangered Olive Ridleys continue to be killed despite directions passed by the Supreme Court's Central Empowered Committee in April 2004.