Work crews crush sea turtle eggs on Trinidad beach

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Thousands of leatherback turtle eggs and hatchlings have been crushed by heavy machinery along a Trinidad beach widely regarded as the world’s densest nesting area for the biggest of all living sea turtles, conservationists said Monday.

Government work crews with bulldozers were redirecting the Grand Riviere, a shifting river that was threatening a hotel where tourists watch the huge endangered turtles lay their eggs. But several conservationists who monitor turtle populations say the crews botched the job, digging up an unnecessarily large swath of the important nesting beach in the tiny coastal town on Trinidad’s northern shore.

Sherwin Reyz, a member of the Grand Riviere Environmental Organization, estimated that as many as 20,000 eggs were crushed or consumed by the scores of vultures and stray dogs that descended upon the narrow strip of beach to eat the remains after the Saturday operation by the Ministry of Works.

Marc de Verteuil, of the Papa Bois Conservation organization, said the river had already eroded a lot of the dense nesting areas on the beach before the weekend, but the government work crews made a bad situation worse.

De Verteuil said he could not gauge how the loss could affect the region’s leatherback population.