Take Action to Save Loggerhead Sea Turtles

Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Photo: NOAA)

The number of female loggerheads nesting on Florida beaches – one of the most important habitats for the species – has declined by 50 percent in the past decade — and that was before the Gulf oil disaster.

Oil is extremely toxic to loggerheads and other species. Exposure can cause skin loss, poisoning, drowning and death… which is exactly why we need every available tool to help save the lives of individual loggerheads and save this species from extinction.

Urge federal officials to improve protections for loggerhead sea turtles.

Scientists and government officials have sounded the alarm about what this could mean for the future of the ancient sea mariners. The National Marine Fisheries Service is now proposing to upgrade protection for loggerheads from threatened to endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Oiled sea turtles (like this Kemp's ridley -- an already endangered cousin of the loggerhead) are already being seen. Photo: Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

As Defenders Executive Vice President (and former head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Jamie Rappaport Clark wrote to Defenders supporters earlier today:

These turtles need our help even more now.

The world’s second-largest loggerhead nesting area is on the beaches of the southeastern United States, the vast majority of which includes Florida’s central Atlantic beaches.

This area is expected to be threatened by the horrific oil slick, depending on how much of the slick gets picked up by the Loop Current — a powerful ocean current that could bring the slick around the southern reaches of the state, through the sensitive coral reef and mangrove areas of the Everglades and the Keys, and then into the Gulf Stream and up the east coast of Florida.

The spill could not have happened at a worse time: loggerheads and other sea turtles — as well as many shorebirds — are in the peak of their nesting seasons right now.

The catastrophe in the Gulf poses a unique and terrifying threat to the survival of our loggerheads. Please take action now to save these amazing seafarers.