• Selling Last and Love in Bali
• What to Do-Kuta and Seminyak
• The Hidden Life of South Bali
• The Struggle to Save Bali's Turtles
• Jimbaran-The Bukit
• What to Do-Impossible Surf at The Bukit
• Fair Trade in Bali
• Ubud
• A Dance for Every Day
• Balinese Painters
• Ubud-What to do
• A Word of Dance
• East Bali in a Nutshell
• The Hidden life of East Bali
• Klungkung
• Where to Stay-Padang Bay
• Where to Stay Candidasa
• First and Third World in Tenganan
• Amlapura-Tirtagangga
• Tirtagangga and Around
• Amed Beach
• Planning Your Trip: The Best of Bali
• South Bali in a Nutshell

 

The Struggle to Save Bali 's turtles

Selling turtle satay

In 2003, a young member of the Indonesia NGO, ProFauna, was attacked by villagers as she came to moni tor the turtle population with Forest Departument staff.Local officials are not immune from the lure of wealth, either, and some turtle trading takes place under the guise of official conservation and tourism facilities. As noted by Robin Marinos of Earth Advocates, a organisa­tion that lobbies the authorities to pass and enforce conservation laws, “Today, Balinese turtles are growing rare that fishermen have to go as far as K­alimantan to find some”.

Conservation and Culture

Besides economic motives, some Balinese have difficulties understanding why they should stop their consumtion of turtle. The concept of “endangered species “ is ­new to Bali . It challenges local belief that everything in the sea is created by powerful gods who will protect this bounty for the use of humans. This traditional thought ­worked well for centuries, when a sparse population used small boats to feed their community. But this kind of thought may be ill-suited to the modern world, where the technologies for destroying the environment have reached unprecedented levels, feeding a growing population and the insatiable greed of a few merchant.

Ketut Sarjana Putra acknowledges that the ban on -­ turtle consumption has left some Balinese confused. But he believes that if Balinese understood reasons behind it, they would come to agree. He lays partial blame on Bali 's governor, who prohibited the turtle trade with ­ out proper communication to the people. “they should have thought about setting up programmes to explain the ban to the people and to provide economic assistance to those who were going to lose money, “ he says. ­

The controversy over turtle conservation continues ­ to rage, with the turtles, unable to speak for themselves, at the centre of the debate. Hopefully by the time all the arguing among humans is over, there will still be turtles left to benefit from the verdict.

environmental activists appearing

local conservation organi­sations

turtle trading takes