Headline digest: India
features prominently in the news again
this month, with reports of a new
port development, arrival of the olive
ridleys, enforcement actions in Orissa,
and conservation activities elsewhere.
A few stories touch on the aftermath
of oil spills in the waters of
Australia and India. Objections to
a proposal to set aside 1,000 turtles
for ceremonial sacrifice in Bali
are highlighted; and satellite tracking
projects in India, United Arab
Emirates and Viet Nam are featured.
Interested in these stories and more?
Just “hover and click” on
them in the 'MONTHLY ROUND-UP', below.
This past month, the Secretariat circulated to IOSEA Focal Points a number of documents needing their follow-up, including: (1) a status report and request for voluntary contributions; (2) draft Terms of Reference / Guidelines for IOSEA Focal Points and Sub-regional coordinators; and (3) reminders/updates on the IOSEA Technical Support and Capacity-Building Programme.
The United States Focal Point has been collaborating with the Secretariat to finalise a draft options paper on the proposed ‘network of sites of importance for marine turtles’; and is expected to announce arrangements for a conference call next week among the working group members.
Updates have been made to various pages of the IOSEA website, including the popular ‘Species Overview’ page and Flipper Tag series (for Indonesia, c/o Dr. Matheus Halim; and Seychelles, c/o Dr Jeanne Mortimer).
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Anmol Kumar, Inspector General of Forests (WL), as India’s new IOSEA Focal Point; replacing the outgoing IGF-WL, Dr. R.B. Lal. Other minor revisions have been made to the IOSEA Membership list, including provisional arrangements for correspondence with Australia and Mauritius, pending the formal appointment of Focal Points in those countries.
Lastly, an
appeal: The IOSEA website has
many hundreds of regular followers (“returning visitors”)
every month, on top of a couple of thousand “absolute
unique visitors” who may be visiting
the site for the first time. The
IOSEA “Useful
Contacts” database makes
links to websites of hundreds
of other organisations considered relevant
to turtle conservation
in the region. If even a small percentage
of those sites made links to the IOSEA website,
as some do already, even more people might
be motivated to learn about turtle conservation
activities in our region.
If
your organisation has a website and
would like to help us to promote region-wide
exchange of information on turtle conservation,
please take a few minutes to make a
dedicated link to the
IOSEA website: www.ioseaturtles.org.
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Mahmood Moghimi of Iran’s Department of Environment in Bushehr province provides this short note on threats to coral reefs in his country: 
Two
multi-year projects focusing on ecosystem
and fisheries management – partly funded
by the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) and executed through the UN Food
and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) – held
separate workshops in and around Bangkok
in the first week of November. 
