There are a number of community programs currently monitoring turtle nesting beaches throughout Australia. Cross collaboration between such programs is vital to ensure that monitoring is consistent and results contribute to the national and international knowledge of marine turtles.
Following are some case studies of communities that have implemented their own turtle monitoring programs.
Port Hedland
The Care for Hedland Environmental Association, Flatback turtle monitoring program began in October 2004 through the assistance of WWF and the Ningaloo Turtle Program.
The Program is conducted from November to March each season and uses a track monitoring method that allows for the recording and marking of successful nesting attempts, as well as the recording of potential disturbance to nests such as vehicles, fox predation.
The non-invasive nature of the monitoring allows for a high level of community involvement from school aged children to adults.
During the 2007/08 turtle nesting season, the Port Hedland turtle monitoring program attracted 68 volunteers who contributed over 1,135 hours of work to the program. Over 1,300 nests were identified on nesting beaches and almost 800 false crawls were counted.
After a desire to make more Broome locals aware of nesting marine turtles on Cable Beach, Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) in Broome instigated the first year of a community turtle monitoring program during the 2006/07 Flatback nesting season. After training with the Ningaloo Turtle Program in Exmouth, Kelly Howlett of Care for Hedland helped train interested volunteers in the Broome region. Volunteers were taught track monitoring techniques, data collection and correct interaction protocols for marine turtles.
The monitoring beach was divided into 3 sections; Minyirr, Dabadabakun and Billingur. Daily monitoring commenced with the 30 local volunteers collecting their CVA patrol bag and walking along their designated section of coast. Leslie Baird (Chelonia Wildlife Rehabilitation & Release) was on call in case of any stranded or injured turtles.
Social community BBQ’s were held throughout the season culminating in a thank you night with the presentation of certificates and trophies. During the 2006/07 season, 20 nests were recorded on Cable Beach, all of which were Flatback turtles. The program during 2007/08 followed a similar evolution with 56 Flatback nests recorded on Cable Beach.
The Broome community remains supportive of community turtle monitoring program run by CVA which operates with the support of the local Rubibi indigenous community and the Kimberley Land Council.
