Turtle Story
ISBN 81-7371-566-1
About the Book
Marine turtles become accessible to humans for brief episodes in their life history, when they leave the open oceans and lumber onshore to nest. These giant air-breathing turtles belong to the most ancient line of living reptiles; however, poaching and egg depredation, development along ocean and coastal zones, and the rapid expansion and mechanisation of the fishing sector in the last few decades have severely endangered these tenacious survivors.
Five of the world’s seven species of marine turtles occur on the Indian subcontinent. Many of these form part of regionally or globally important populations. Unfortunately, information for most sites and populations is unavailable or outdated, deriving from the initial path-?nding surveys that were conducted between the early ’70s and ’90s.
A GOI–UNDP-sponsored project was carried out between 2000–02 to update information on the status of India’s marine turtles and to provide an impetus to participatory conservation. This book documents the results of surveys carried out under that Sea Turtle Project.
Special Features
- Status surveys conducted under the GOI–UNDP-sponsored project, along the east and west coasts of the Indian mainland, the Lakshadweep archipelago and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
- Status of marine turtles in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh
- Review of fishery-related issues, including causes and effects of incidental mortality, and potential solutions like turtle excluder devices
- Review of conservation efforts
- Legislation and international instruments pertaining to marine turtles
- Research on the biology of marine turtles and efforts to conserve their habitats
This is the first book on marine turtles in India and the subcontinent, with contributions from leading experts in studying the ecology and conservation of marine turtles, from India and abroad: contributors include Bivash Pandav, Biswajit Mohanty, Jack Frazier, Belinda Wright, Rom Whitaker, among others.
About the authors
The Editors
Kartik Shanker is faculty at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and adjunct fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore. He has worked on conservation genetics of marine turtles on the east and west coasts of India and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. His coastal and marine conservation programme at ATREE works on policy and governance issues, focussing on marine turtle conservation in Orissa. He is editor of the Indian Ocean Turtle Newsletter, a newsletter for the conservation and management of marine turtles in the Indian Ocean; Regional Vice Chair (South Asia), IUCN/SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group; and executive editor of Conservation and Society.
BC Choudhury serves as a faculty member at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. He has been involved in the research and management of aquatic endangered fauna for over thirty years. He was the Wildlife Institute of India’s coordinator for the UNDP-assisted, nationwide marine turtle conservation project of the Government of India. He is a member of the IUCN/SSC Marine Turtle Specialist Group and has published numerous scientific papers on marine turtle conservation and research in national and international journals and currently directs several conservation programmes on marine species.
ISBN: 81-7371-566-1
How to order
For orders  
|
