En Español
SWOT – THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S SEA TURTLES
SWOT is a partnership among Conservation International, the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group, Duke University’s OBIS-SEAMAP, and an ever-growing international team of local organizations, scientists and conservationists. Together, this powerful group – the SWOT Team – seeks to create a permanent global network of specialists working to accelerate the conservation of sea turtles and their habitats, pooling and synthesizing data, and regularly sharing the information with audiences who can make a difference. Born out of the necessity to generate a global perspective of sea turtle status able to inform strategic conservation action, SWOT is the first and only effort of its kind.
SWOT’s award-winning annual magazine,
SWOT Report, is designed to channel the SWOT Team’s collective power by highlighting its success stories, innovations, and new findings. Each year,
SWOT Report is distributed back to the SWOT Team members who helped create it, free of charge, for use in their own local outreach campaigns in communities where sea turtles nest, forage, and migrate.
PARTNERSHIP WITH THE IUCN MARINE TURTLE SPECIALIST GROUP
IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network. CI has been a member of IUCN for over 20 years, and co-manages the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group (MTSG), which was founded as part of the Species Survival Commission in 1966. Today, the MTSG is considered the world authority on sea turtles and boasts a membership of more than 250 volunteer sea turtle specialists in 80 countries, united by the common vision of restoring healthy sea turtle populations to healthy seas. The group’s primary responsibility is to regularly assess the global risk of extinction for each of the world’s seven species of sea turtles using IUCN Red List criteria.
MR. LEATHERBACK
Mr. Leatherback is many things – he is friendly and huggable, passionate and wise; he is a crowd pleasing, world traveling conservation icon and internet phenomenon.
Since "hatching" in April, 2006 at the International Sea Turtle Symposium in Crete, Greece, this life sized, parade-quality leatherback sea turtle has been using his jet-setter lifestyle and internet know-how to educate people the world over about the plight of his kind. Always fun, entertaining, and optimistic, Mr. Leatherback shows his fans how simple changes made in their everyday lives can help protect sea turtles and their ocean dwellings.
TURTLEVISION
TurtleVision is a channel on YouTube.com aimed at connecting new audiences to the world of sea turtle conservation through videos shot by the dynamic people at its center. Viewers are taken directly into the field alongside those at the frontlines of the effort to save sea turtles and their habitats, giving them an inside look at the challenges, joys, and complexity of sea turtle work. The site further capitalizes on the draw of TurtleVision’s captivating video content to introduce visitors to the direct actions they can take to help save sea turtles from extinction.
OCEANEERS
Set to launch in Fall 2009, Oceaneers is a social-networking website aimed at solving a critical marine conservation issue – lack of manpower on-the-ground.
Marine conservation is a labor-intensive endeavor, and the field projects responsible for on-the-ground action require a steady stream of people to help get things done and provide basic operating funds. These projects often rely on seasonal volunteers and interns to help meet these needs. While there is no lack of interested and capable volunteers in the world, finding them can be difficult, particularly in the case of lesser-known or newer projects. The resulting fluctuations in personnel and funds can mean that data are not collected, important habitats are not monitored, and projects are left unfinished; in essence, that critical conservation work is not being done.
The goal of Oceaneers is to build a bridge between would-be volunteers and the conservation projects in need of their help. Project leaders and past volunteers will be able to share their experiences with each other and prospective volunteers through comments, photos, and videos, fostering a mobilized community of people inspiring and encouraging each other to take further action on behalf of marine conservation.