Rescue & Protect Sea Turtles in Thailand and Asia

Dear Supporters, 

Our projects consist of many different aspects, all of which are aiming to conserve and study wildlife in Southern Thailand. With our actions and support to our partnerships every hour in the field becomes a chain effect that creates global awareness on the importance of conserving our environment and its wildlife. Our conservation projects not just open our volunteer’s eyes but the visitors’ at the turtle centre and potentially those of the community members we live with who are getting inspired to want change.  

The rest of the monsoon season only showed us how powerful nature could be and how persistent humans are when we want to reach our goals. No rain stopped us during this last three months to show full commitment on involving community members to progress towards SDG goals 11, 14 & 15 and to keep the fight for a clean village.

It has been through leadership projects and reiteration of former intern proposals that we carried out multiple village activities to discourage the dumping of trash and waste in areas other than dedicated bins. In addition to our regular beach and village clean ups, the efforts to maintain a trash zero village have been supported by a leadership project organised by one of our short-term interns; who identifed trash hotspots around the village and placed No Littering signs made by the community kids. After a series of conservation lessons about plastic pollution and its effects on wildlife, the CDC kids attending to conservation lessons were proposed to create anti-littering signs and participate in their own creative way for the betterment of their community. Allowing the kids to create the signs themselves gave them a much stronger sense of contribution towards maintaining their village clean and broadened awareness to their families about the huge problematic of littering.

As a Friday project, we organized another big lake clean in Ban Nam Khem to demonstrate the community members our persistence on claiming for a responsible trash deposition. The amount of rubbish collected was still breath-taking but already could be distinguished a better scenario than the first time this was done. The mayor contributed providing the boats to proceed on the clean and we used different tools and resources that make the collection easier and more efficient. Despite the clean-up poster announcement around the village no community members joined us this time. But we will not give up on our fight!

The camera traps settled for our island’s biodiversity research project are still providing evidence of the huge wildlife diversity inhabiting these unique habitats however, the number of Sunda pangolin sightings have decreased for the last month. This fact does not disappoint us but just provide us with more information on the behaviour of this critically endangered mammal species. Since it is scientifically believed that their habitat range should extend for no more than one squared kilometre, the recent camera traps purchased with GVI Trust funds will allow us to extend our surveying area and with hope of getting captures on the new areas then start mapping their distribution and eventually establishing population estimates for the island. This data will add an extra range site to the conservation efforts by the IUCN and international conservation organisations and increase understanding of this cryptic species.

The highlight from this quarter has been the fundraiser organized at the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Centre. With the objective to help support the work being done at the head-start centre and to help implement some improvements, the staff and volunteers of GVI Phang Nga took part in an action packed obstacle course and challenge day. The event took place on Friday 17th August and split into teams we completed the course that the Royal Thai Navy use for training purposes, which features a series of challenging obstacles, many of which involve going over water using ropes. A team of navy soldiers demonstrated every obstacle and accompanied us during the whole course to ensure safety of participants, however some of us could not help ending up getting wet! After the obstacle course was completed, we undertook a scavenger hunt at the beach that consisted on collecting a list of random marine litter items while accomplishing this way a fun beach clean. The teams then had to act as a nesting sea turtle, make a turtle out of sand and a portrait of our PM with the marine litter! It was a fun, challenging and team building day, all in the spirit of raising money for our gorgeous turtles. With the funds raised through the fundraiser our partner at the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Centre is now able to get the monetary support for a monthly visit from a vet from the Phuket Marine Biological Centre. They will provide treatment to the turtles detected to have severe infections and monitor their welfare on regular basis. We have also encouraged the Navy Base to implement a cleaning schedule that adjusts to the number of hands helping and tank needs which has shown a great success on the cleanliness conditions of all tanks at the centre.

Thank you for your continued support, none of this would be possible without your contribution, however big or small! 

All our best, 

GVI Phang Nga

The Conservation Team