Kemp’s ridley sea turtle nests for the first time in 75 years in Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The world’s smallest and most endangered sea turtles have hatched in the wild in Louisiana for the first known time in more than 75 years, officials said Wednesday.

Louisiana was largely ruled out as a sea turtle nesting ground decades ago, but this determination shows why barrier island restoration is very important,” Chip Kline, president of the Louisiana Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority, said in a news release.

Teams monitoring the Chandeleur Islands, a chain 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of New Orleans, to help design a restoration project found tracks of females coming and going from nests and hatchlings emerging from a nest. .

The first tracks were found by a bird survey team “before sea turtle nesting season really started,” said Matthew Weigel, coastal resource science manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

After that team brought back a photo of a “crawling” sea turtle, the two agencies began weekly flights over the island to search for more. Weigel said he and Todd Baker of the restoration agency were walking between two they had seen from the plane on July 29 when they stumbled across pup tracks on the beach.

“There were some high fives,” he said. They followed those tracks to a nest they didn’t know about. There, they found two newly emerged small turtles, which they followed to the beach.

Weigel said aerial surveys found 52 sets of tracks that experts identified as Kemp’s ridleys, although some were “false tracks” where no nest was made.

“The endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle has returned to nest on the Chandeleur Islands, highlighting the need to protect this sensitive habitat so it can continue to be home to ocean and coastal wildlife well into the future,” said Beth. Lowell, Vice President of the United States. States of the non-profit environmental organization Oceana.

Louisiana agencies said threatened loggerheads are also nesting in the Chandeleurs, which are part of the country’s second-oldest national wildlife refuge, called the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.

Loggerhead nests found in 2015 on Grand Isle, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of Chandeleurs, were the first confirmed sea turtle nests in Louisiana in more than 30 years, according to the release.

All six species of sea turtles found in US waters are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Tens of thousands of Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, which grow to about 0.6 meters (2 feet) long, once nested in Mexico, but only about 250 did so in the 1980s, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Wednesday’s announcement came less than two weeks after officials reported first sea turtle nest since 2018 on mainland Mississippi.

That Pass Christian Harbor location is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Chandeleurs, the easternmost part of Louisiana. The chain has been eaten away by erosion, tropical storms including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 BP oil spill.

The two agencies have been closely monitoring the islands since May as part of the work to restore the islands using money from the oil spill.

The sea turtle nesting discovery will help ensure nesting habitat for sea turtles is conserved and enhanced, officials said.

Most Kemp’s ridley nests are found along the western Gulf of Mexico, 95% of them in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, according to NOAA. “Occasional nesting has been documented in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama,” according to their website on the species.

Juvenile Kemp’s ridley sea turtles feed in the estuaries of Louisiana. Many species of sea turtles gather around the Chandeleur Islands, feeding in and around the state’s only seagrass beds, according to the news release.

“It is well known that the Chandeleur Islands provide key habitats for a large number of important species; however, with the recent discovery of a successful Kemp’s ridley hatchling, the value of the islands to the region has increased,” said Secretary of Fish and Wildlife Jack Montoucet.

Additional nests may be discovered on the Chandeleur Islands as monitoring continues and hatchlings emerge, according to the news release. Nesting season peaks in June and July, with the eggs taking 50 to 60 days to hatch, she said.

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