Saving turtles
Environmental pressure group Greenpeace has urged Mexico to ratify two regional cooperation treaties which are crucial for the protection of endangered sea turtles. Although Mexico's environmental laws are more advanced than many of its neighbours, its failure to ratify international agreements it has signed has undermined its attempts to protect the rare turtles, said a press release of Greenpeace Mexico.
"Mexico cannot allow itself the luxury of waiting,' said the statement. "This situation diminishes and even negates the great efforts at conservation which the Mexican authorities have made.' Mexico has enacted laws to protect sea turtles within its territorial waters. But the migratory patterns of the turtles and their tendency to disperse make full protection impossible, unless the cooperation treaties are ratified, Greenpeace said.
The two accords are related to the convention for the protection and development of the Caribbean marine region, signed in 1990, and the Inter-American convention for the protection and conservation of marine turtles, signed on December 29 last year. Greenpeace said the swordfish industry in Chile, Peru and Hawaii, shark fishing in Guatemala, prawn fishing in the United States and turtle fishing in Cuba were threatening various sea turtle species.
In March, Greenpeace and 50 Mexican environmental groups filed a criminal complaint against a giant Mexican-Japanese saltworks in Mexico's north-western Baja California state, blaming it for the deaths of 94 protected sea turtles between the end of 1997 and early 1999.
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