tutrle festival!!!!

Sahyadri Nisarg Mitra (SNM), Chiplun will organise Turtle Festival on March 22 and 23 Velas, taluka Mandangad, district Ratnagiri.
The main objective of the festival is to spread awareness about turtle protection and conservation and also about the Turtle Protection and Conservation Project started six years back. Marine turtles are under threat though out the world. They are getting extinct year by year. Large scale fishing business, increasing marine pollution and poaching are affecting the growth of marine turtles. “The turtle needs to be protected since it plays an important role in marine ecology,” said Viswas Katdare of SNM. SNM started project at Velas six years back and began turtle conservation on the entire coast line of the state. “We have successfully released more than 16000 hatchlings from 384 nests in the sea safely during last six years. The project is now being implemented at 20 villages on coastal area of Maharashtra,” Katdare said.
Thanks to an enterprising initiative of the SNM, founded by Katdare and a few like-minded people, the Olive Ridley turtle, one of the most endangered species of turtles in India, will continue to make its annual trip to Velas for years to come. What makes the Olive Ridley turtle unique is that unlike other reptiles, it nests and lays eggs at the exact spot where it was born.
It all began in 2002, when Vijay Mahabal, a nature-lover and a member of SNM, on a visit to Velas village found a large number of broken egg shells on the seashore. Mahabal found out that Velas is the most preferred nesting place of the Olive Ridley. Of the 110 nests found on the 720-km coastline of the state, 32 are located at Velas. But Mahabal was shocked to know that for generations, some villagers had been illegally poaching and selling the eggs.
Mahabal rushed to Katdare, who came up with the idea of a turtle conservation project. The project is now a success story spread over 30 villages on the state’s entire coastline. The NGO chose a few locals to keep a round-the-clock vigil and collect eggs from the nests and shift them to specially-made hatcheries on the beach. When the eggs hatch about 45-50 days later, they are carefully released into the sea. “We decided to enlist local support by offering the locals a monthly remuneration, which was double the amount they earned by selling eggs,” recalled Katdare. The idea worked and today some of the biggest poachers of turtles in the village have become conservationists.