Rescue & Protect Sea Turtles in Thailand and Asia

Dear Supporters,

In Phang Nga hub during the last year we have been watching how this country, especially the south , is changing really fast. The development has mainly been in the tourism sector. Our conservation projects aims are focus to adapt to the new challenges and problems that our area has. One of the most serious problem is plastic pollution on our beaches and researching endangered species unique in the world. 

We said goodbye to the dry season with clear skies and high temperatures to enter in the next transitional months. Now, the weather is unpredictable and our schedule can change unexpectedly. So we are always ready to face it with a lot of passion and commitment. 

Our partner at the Royal Thai Navy Sea Turtle Conservation Centre has been busy completing their new and bigger reservoir water pump during the last 3 months. 

Also they are making new water channels across the navy base to store and use the rainfall. Our hard work continues to ensure that the tanks and the turtles are in good health and condition. Also our volunteers are really concern and focus in the turtle program doing new enrichment and beach clean at navy base. For that reason navy base rewards their hard work with several turtle realizing during the last three months. 

During the last quarter we are really proud of our Plastic Pollution program. The passion and commitment of our volunteers have been brutal. We increased the number of beach cleans around our area, we even did a river clean in  kayaks around Nam khem mangroves. The rain never stopped us from doing our work. Some volunteer even did a beach cleans during their free time. We beat our records collecting more than 400 kg during the last three months. 

Our Island project was really busy during the last three months. We had a couple of incidents; somebody stole the SD card from our camera in the south of Koh Ra. For that reason we decided to remove all the camera traps from this area because it is  a conflict spot with illegal logging activities and hunters. We also have good news, during April and May we have had sightings of Pangolins in Koh Ra Center, potentially the same individual. 

The second incident was a huge fire occurred in KPT Island around end of April narrowly missing the Ban Lion Village. Nobody was injured and only a dozen trees were burned compared to the big area damaged. The bad news for us was that we had two cameras traps in the damaged area losing one of them. 

After  the habitat loss around our area of  Nam Khem for the building of the future resorts. We spent the last three months finding new hot spots to do our animals surveys. Now we have 5 new places really close to our base with excellent animal biodiversity to do our surveys. Although, we keep looking for new places during the upcoming months. 

We carry on our projects with the same passion and commitment as the first day. We are so proud of how all is improving in navy base. This good work is possible thanks to our volunteers. Also we are so happy to see how our plastic pollution program attracts and inspires a lot volunteers to join us.  Great news on our camera trap project for this quarter as we have had sightings every month and we are really concerned about all the changes happening around our area finding new hot spot for our surveys.

So we are ready to face next months with lot of enthusiasm and courage.

With Gratitude,

GVI Phang Nga