“A concerning story arose this past week from Padre Island National Seashore on the gulf coast of Texas. For decades biologists at the national seashore have run a Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program. In short, this widely acclaimed and popular program has helped build the populations of the endangered Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle by taking eggs from turtle nests, incubating them, and then releasing the hatchlings into the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the successes of this program, Park Service officials now want to reduce funding to the program and make programmatic changes that Public Employees for Environmental Responsibly equates with “conservation malpractice.”
One of the criticisms made in the report is that the turtle recovery program’s roughly $2 million annual budget represents nearly a quarter of the national seashore’s entire budget, to the detriment of other programs.
If the Park Service is concerned about other programs at the seashore, it should boost their funding, not cut that of a program as successful and important as the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery program.”