Conservationists warned yesterday that Malaysians’ voracious appetite for turtle eggs could drive the marine creatures to extinction.
Turtle eggs are sold openly in markets in parts of Malaysia.
Turtles once arrived in their thousands to lay eggs on Malaysian beaches, but are now increasingly rare due to poaching and various coastal developments.
Environmental group WWF released a report saying that hundreds of thousands of turtle eggs are eaten in Malaysia every year, despite numerous campaigns to get them off the menu.
“One of the contributing factors to the leatherback turtles’ disappearance from our shores is egg consumption.
We wouldn’t want the same thing to happen to our green and hawksbill turtles,” said WWF-Malaysia executive director Dionysius SK Sharma.
The report commissioned by WWF-Malaysia and prepared by TRAFFIC Southeast Asia showed that the market dem-and for turtle eggs had far exceeded supply.
It estimated that 422,000 eggs were traded in the state of Terengganu alone in 2007, more than twice the number of green turtle eggs that had been laid in the state.
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