More want to help save turtles

KUALA TERENGGANU (NST): The Year of the Ox has brought a lot of luck for a turtle volunteer programme here or maybe showered it with a bit too much fortune!

The Save Our Turtles Outreach Programme (STOP), conducted by Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, recently received more than 700 applications, with over 500 submitted on the first day of registration.

However, only 336 volunteers have been accepted, which is an increase compared with last year’s 215.

STOP, based in Chagar Hutang which is part of the Redang Island, involves gotong-royong, tagging of turtles and in situ egg incubation. It runs from April to October every year.

Apart from the volunteer programme, STOP also has three adoption schemes, namely, terrapin, turtle and turtle nest adoption. Since its inception in 1998, more than 1,000 local and 100 foreign volunteers have participated.

STOP research and public outreach officer Chen Pelf Nyok said she was surprised to see so much interest despite expecting a lot of applications.

“We did not expect so many applications. It took me five hours to reply 100 emails, telling them we had to turn them down as we are overbooked.”

Chen believes the surge in applications is due to good word of mouth though it was unfortunate that they could not accommodate more participants.

As it is, they have increased the number of participants from eight to 12 for each slot. There are 28 slots this year.

However, Chen said, there is never too much of a good thing as more participants mean more people to help raise awareness.

“As the majority of the participants are youngsters, this means we are planting the conservationist seeds early for the future generation.”

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