Of the many species of wild birds and animals that inhabit the 88 Bijago islands spread over more than 10,000sqkm none is more sacred than the turtle.

“We Bajagoans see ourselves as the keepers of the turtles,” Domingo Alves, the head game warden at Eticoga, the main village on Orango island, told IRIN, adding that the animal is featured in many local ceremonies.

The problem is that Bajagoans also eat this most sacred of animals, and, with the nets from the now ever-present industrial fishing trawlers accidentally trapping more turtles than before, all five turtle species in the archipelago are nearing extinction.

So ecologists, together with donors and aid organisations, have come together to try to make the estimated 27,000 inhabitants of the islands aware that they could lose one of their most valued resources.

“It takes time and patience to get people to understand that something they have always had could one day disappear,” said Castro Barbosa, biologist and the director of João Vieira and Poilão National Marine Park, who is employed by the Institute for Biodiversity and Protected Areas (IBAP) headquartered in Guinea Bissau’s capital on the mainland. “Turtles have been a source of nutrition but there are plenty of substitutes available,” he added.

The institute is funded by the World Bank to help the government’s ailing national park system to protect fauna and flora in the islands. With many rare species of wildlife including gazelles, crocodiles, manatees (sea cows), and unusual hippopotami which live mostly in salt water, the area is currently under review by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for World Heritage Site status.

“Communities take part in the management of the national parks, so that they benefit from them while saving the biodiversity resources,” said Peter Kristensen, the World Bank taskforce team leader for the project.

Some funding goes to special primary schools on the islands that focus on environmental education. “The children are made aware of the species of mammals, fish and birds that are under threat,” said Alves, who sometimes teaches the children on the issues.
In November the World Food Programme started a trial school feeding programme in two of the schools. In the two months since then, attendance rates have doubled and officials expect that after a survey has been conducted the children’s nutritional levels will have increased.

Endangered species

Still a big question: Will the turtles survive. Even the most common of the five turtle species that inhabits the islands, the green turtle Chelonia mydas, is on the World Conservation Union (IUCN)’s “red list” of endangered species.

The species migrates along the West African coast as far north as Mauritania but according to IUCN Poilão Island in the outer Bijagos is the largest single nesting area anywhere in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.

Guinea Bissau’s government has a law banning the killing of turtles but the environmentalists IRIN spoke to all said the law only exists on paper.

Also IRIN talked with people on the islands who say they eat turtles. “It’s the most delicious meat I know,” Richardo de Pina, a young man resting on one of the many pristine beaches at Orango Island, told IRIN. “My mother cooks it so well; we all pester her with the question: ‘When are you going to cook it again?’”

The Green Turtle is considered particularly tasty. Its name comes not from the colour of its shell but its green fat which gives it a distinctive taste, according to turtle researcher and conservator Blair Witherington author of the 2006 book “An Extraordinary Natural History of Some Uncommon Turtles”.
Still, the young man in Orango seemed aware of a problem. “We used to eat turtle more when I was young but now when you look for the animals along the shore they’re harder to find.”

Barbosa, the IBAP biologist, said banning the killing of turtles would never work but that does not mean that efforts to conserve them are failing. “Conservation of rare species is possible as long as people eat them in moderation” he said.

He said IBAP’s message is that people should only kill a turtle when others are around and they should only kill one turtle at a time.

Alves, the head game warden, said people now only eat turtle on very special occasions. “It is part of some ceremonies here to eat turtles and that will never change, but the waters are teeming with all sorts of seafood that people can eat at other times. They now know that eating turtle any time is wrong.”

Industrial fishing threat

Experts agree that the main reason turtle populations are declining is that they are being killed by fishermen coming from elsewhere “An emerging threat [to the turtles] is the rapid development of fisheries in this region,” states the Marine Turtle Research Group at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation in the University of Exeter in the UK.

Big international fishing boats which often operate illegally are the main culprits, Barbosa said. “Every time they haul in their big nets at least two or three turtles die.”

Bijago fishermen do not use nets, only spears and fishing lines.

An added problem comes from fishermen from neighboring countries, particularly Senegal and Sierra Leone, who cut down the mangroves in the Bijagos to make fires to smoke and preserve fish they catch before transporting them home in their canoes. “They are destroying the natural habitats of turtles and other rare species at an alarming rate,” Barbosa said.

With locals becoming more aware of the fragility of their environment they are on the look-out for abusers. “People come to us all the time to report poaching, illegal fishing and the cutting down of mangroves,” said Barbosa. “The problem is that nobody here - not even the government - has the means to do anything about it.”