Research Paper

How to protect turtles

Do you think that turtles could buy air conditioning? The influence of global warming affects not only the human being but also the animals, and one of these animals is the turtle. Both turtles and global warming have a long history. First, turtles have been found on this planet from the Stone Age and many scientists have said that turtles have lived with the dinosaurs, according to The Canberra Times (2007); turtle is one of the oldest animals and has survived for 200 million years. Next, if we think deeply about global warming, which is the increase in the temperatures, we would figure out that the global warming has a long history as well, how? It is the main reason for finishing the ice age, according to the Weekend Australian (2007); it is an incontestable fact that there is a link between global warming and the increasing temperature. So we have a long history for both the attacker and the attacked. There are many signs and events that have alarmed us that turtles are suffering from the climate change. For example, according to The Canberra Times (2007), global warming is drying up the water and there are many small lakes that have been dried up, and they saw thousands of dead or dying turtles, so when the water dried up, turtles could die and could lose their habitat. One more effect is, according to Velasquez-Manoff (2007), that with the high temperature the turtle's eggs will become female turtles and with the low temperature the turtle's eggs will become male turtles, which means there is direct influence on the turtle's productivity. Furthermore, according to The Canberra Times (2007), viruses and bacteria could grow more actively in the warm water, which will cause some disease among turtles. There are many kinds of turtles that are facing the danger of global warming, The Canberra Times (2007, para. 18), says that "there are 270 turtles species in the world, and more than half are threatened with extinction". One of these turtle species is the leatherbacks, according to Velasquez-Manoff (2007); in the period between 1980 and 2002, the female leatherbacks decreased their nesting from 91,000 to 2,000. That informs us that turtles are in danger of extinction because they have decreased their nesting

There are many ways to solve or at least to decrease the influence of global warming on turtles; for example, charge the factories’ owners for their pollution, form special organizations to care about turtles, build special places to produce male turtles, and educate the people and change some of their habits.

First, we should charge the factories’ owners for their pollution. As for the pollution from the factories, why we don't stand up together and say to those people; hey, this is our planet too, so could you please choose one of two things, either find a way to produce without destroying our environment or pay some money to solve what your factories cause in our air. The owners of the factories live in great palaces at the expense of our health and at the expense of turtles’ habitat. We should tell these owners that you are living in perfect houses but you are destroying the turtles’ habitat. Many water bodies have been dried from the pollution of your factories, so you should participate in helping these turtles and offer not great places like where you live but just small water bodies for them to keep them alive. If they don’t have the time for that, they should support the environmental organizations to help the turtles and keep notice where they usually live and solve their matters. If we have to charge every factory for its pollution, we will get much money to help the turtles by building special organizations to care about them.

Second, we should form special organizations to care about the turtles and to offer a fair habitat for them. Because there is a direct effect of global warming on the turtle by drying up the lakes and the water bodies, many turtles will lose their habitats. These organizations should be in charge of supervising and finding the dried lakes and water bodies to move the turtles to the close lakes to continue their life. One more thing these organizations could do is to educate the people more about how turtles are suffering from the global warming in the TV programs and in the magazines, because many people don't know what we are losing from this global warming. Moreover these organizations should treat the water bodies from the viruses and bacteria that could grow more actively in the warm water. They should take samples of these viruses and bacteria and study them, then figure out some medicines to give the medical treatments for turtles and to clean the water bodies. There are many activities that these organization could do in order to help the turtles to avoid being depleted.

Third, we should build special places to produce male turtles, because there is a direct effect of global warming on the turtle. Under the high temperature, turtle’s eggs would become female turtles and with the low temperature, turtle’s eggs would become male turtles. With some economical and moral support from the governments, factoy owners, and environmental organizations, we could start to produce the male turtles. We are agreed that we can’t control nature's reasons for global warming, but we have our minds to figure out that we can build special places with low temperatures to produce male turtles, and then distribute these males in different seas and oceans in order to continue the cycle of their life. There is no way to keep the human being going in their life, unless we have both males and females. It is the same for most of the animals; they can't live with one gender, so we should help turtles and encourage their production process by offering the male turtles special places with an appropriate temperature.

Finally, we should educate the people and change some of their habits. We should ask people to reduce the use of the cars because it is a direct way of pollution, which is one cause of the global warming. This pollution affects all of the species; besides, if you use a bicycle or if you walk, you will be healthier. Some people really have become lazy and they don’t imagine how they increase the pollution in such a way. Moreover, there is one important point, which is if some of us rely on the cars for our transportation, the next generation will grow up with this knowledge and that will increase our problems. A good example of this issue is if you always watch the TV, you will affect your kids by watching the TV, but if you bring them up with some good values like walking to the school and when they become older, buy bicycles for them, that would be great because you are supporting their health and their environment. We should start from now a huge campaign and effective programs to explain the influence of the global warming and to ask people to use the bicycle or to walk as much as they can. We know it is difficult to travel by bicycle but why we don't use the public transportation to reduce the pollution from the cars? A good challenge we can do is; ask ourselves and our friends to go to our work by bicycle one day a week, for example, Friday; it will be good to change our habits on this lovely day, then try to increase the days from one day to two days. There are some areas in Venice in Italy that you can't use the car, and that's a really amazing thing that you saw all the people walking and using the bicycles instead of the cars and the buses.

There are some people who may say that we have enough turtles in the world and they can't face extinction, but let us tell them this information; with the high temperatures and the drought, there are about 10,000 Murray turtles that were killed in southwest Queensland’s Currawinya (The Canberra Times, 2007). This is just in one small lake. Imagine that we see 10,000 people die in some village because of the pollution; what is our response going to be? We should be fair and honest because this planet belongs not only to human being but also to all species. Furthermore, believe it or not that we will have consequences of losing the turtles in each water body, according to Miller (1994), the ecosystem needs each part in it. The loss of the turtles could cause a loss in other species or could affect the balance of the amount of some species in the same place, and the "trophic cascade" concept says that the existence of any species will affect the other species in making a balance in the ecosystem. If we ignore or degrade the loss of the turtles and don't care about this issue, we will ignore losing many animals until we lose our beautiful environment and our great nature. Finally we don't believe that we hope to say stories to our kids in the future about the turtles, and when some of our children ask, "how did you lose turtles"? It is really shame on us to say that we lost them because we didn't care about them or because we didn't know that they were in danger from global warming.

In conclusion, there is an obvious influence of global warming on turtles, and there are many ways to decrease the effects of climate change on turtles; for example, charge the factories’ owners, form special organizations to care about turtles, build special places to produce male turtles, and change the people's habits. We know that global warming is caused by both natural process and human activities, so let’s focus on the human activities and do our best to keep the turtles alive. Everyone should remember that this is our planet and we should keep and save every part of it, and encourage the existence of any kind of species over it. And one of these species is the turtle. Governments, environmentalists, business people, and normal people should put their hands together in order to keep these animals away from extinction. We are sure that turtles can't buy an air conditioning for themselves, but we know that we can do some steps and plans to face or to decrease the influence of global warming on them.

References:

Aquino, N. (2006, January 13). Checking up on Apo Reef. BusinessWorld. Retrieved November 05, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com

The Canberra Times (Australia). (2007, January 29). Turtles under siege as the environment. Retrieved October 23, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com

Quirke, M. (2006, March 01). Putting the heat on tuatara. The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand). Retrieved November 05, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com

Velasquez-Manoff, M. (2007, June 21). Climate turns up heat on sea turtles. Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved October 28, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com

Weekend Australian, (2007, March 24). Global warming threat to species - save the barrier reef - a special advertising report. Retrieved November 05, 2007, from http://www.lexisnexis.com