Hurricane Irene damages turtle nests

From the Palm Beach Post in the USA:

Sea turtle nests bore the brunt of Irene’s wrath

By Bill DiPaolo

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 2:41 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, 2011

Posted: 12:23 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, 2011

JUPITER — Turtle nests sustained significant damage from Hurricane Irene, but county beaches generally stood up well to the storm, according to county officials.

“There was some damage to plants and dunes,” said Dan Bates, environmental director for Palm Beach County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management. “Some beaches lost a little width and height. But nothing major. And there was no structural damage to coastal buildings.”

While the predicted 18-foot waves did not slam into Palm Beach County beaches, the storm did destroy many sea turtle nests. The six-month nesting season ends Oct. 31.

Loggerhead Marinelife Center officials, who report about 2,300 sea turtle nests this year on north county beaches, inspected 600 of the nests. Eighty nests had been destroyed by the storm, said Loggerhead Biologist Kelly Martin.

About 250 silver-dollar-sized hatchlings were brought in Thursday by beachgoers who found them wandering on the sand. The tiny turtles will be kept for two to four weeks. They will be taken out by boat and released at the weedline, Martin said.

The eggs remaining 1-3 feet below the sand are loggerhead and green sea turtles, with a few leatherbacks, Martin said.

The amount of nests destroyed this summer by storms is about the same as any other year, Martin said.

“Unfortunately, the turtle nesting season is the same (time) as the hurricane season,” she said.

Hurricane Irene’s dangerous power can be traced to global warming says Bill McKibben—and Obama is at fault for his failed leadership on the environment: here.

Irene and birds: here.

How Hurricane Irene Will Help Predict Future Floods: here.

September 2011. As part of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has formally proposed the establishment of a new national wildlife refuge and conservation area in the Kissimmee River Valley, south of Orlando, Florida, to preserve one of the last remaining grassland and longleaf pine savanna landscapes in eastern North America: here.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2011) — Marine turtles worldwide are vulnerable and endangered, but their long lives and broad distribution make it difficult for scientists to accurately determine the threat level to different populations and devise appropriate conservation strategies. To address this concern, researchers have developed a new method to evaluate spatially and biologically distinct groups of marine turtles, called Regional Management Units, or RMUs, to identify threats and data gaps at different scales: here.