Green Sea Turtle, Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus 1758) Conservation in Lundu, Sarawak: Historical Perspective, Framework for Headstart and Community-based Effort:

Green turtle exists in Sarawak waters and its small scale conservation effort had already started since 1950s. The success of the effort is still debatable, as the data collected was not made readily available, while public participation in the conservation effort is still at infancy stage. The current study involved analysing nesting data of green turtles of Sarawak Turtle Islands, headstarting to obtain survival and growth of turtles in captivity while predicting the size at maturity for Sarawak’s green turtle, disease profiling of turtle carcass from headstart program and conducting community based awareness program. Nesting, egg collection, incubation and hatching success data for 36 years has shown that Sarawak’s green sea turtle population has stabilized (approximately 3000 nesters) after the drop in nesting trend in the 1950s. The number of eggs collected and incubated since 1990 until 2016 was 90 to 100 %, which helped to improve the number of nesters as more hatchlings were released into the sea. Estimation shows that Sarawak has an average of 3,088 mature nesters from 2010 until 2016 that corresponds to a calculated remigration interval of 3 to 4 years with internesting frequency of 3 times per season for matures nesters. Eighteen months of headstart program has been successful with survival rate of 22.5 % and 82 % for Batch 1 and 2, respectively. The growth rate of the turtles was 9.86 cm/year (Batch 1) and 15.92 cm/year (Batch 2). Batch 2 was found to be heavier and longer compared to Batch 1 with mean of 2.65 ± 0.64 g for weight and mean of 2.16 ± 0.02 cm for straight carapace length (SCL) compared to Batch 1’s mean of 2.51 ± 0.63 g for weight and mean of 2.08 ± 0.19 cm for SCL. Based on both growth data from the headstart program and secondary data, a von Bertalanffy growth function was obtained for green turtles of Sarawak, where a first time female nester in 1982 with SCL of 101.03 cm was estimated to be between 12.5 to 13 years old. Commonly observed physical appearances of dead hatchlings were eye infection, bite mark, red or blue marks, bloated plastron and emaciation. The types of diseases found were classified as infectious and non-infectious. The commonly found bacteria that are associated with infectious diseases are Proteus sp., Pseudomonas sp., Klebsiella pneumonia, Morganella morganii and Citrobacter freundii while 4 taxa of fungi namely Cladosporium spp., Penicillium sp., Aspergillus spp. and Gibberella sp. were found in the carcasses. Batch 1 showed a higher disease and mortality count when compared to Batch 2 as the handling and management technique was better for the latter. A Standard Operating Procedure comprising of human-turtle interaction manual, husbandry practice plus behavioural and disease management tactics to be used for small scale headstart program was produced. The awareness programs resulted in a positive community-based effort involving local communities of Lundu, the public, as well as private and government agencies. Development of an educational toolkit on green sea turtle at the end of the project is hoped to be of help in the conservation of sea turtle in the future. The survey conducted during the program has reflected a positive vibe as 96.5 % of the total participants were willing to attend another sea turtle awareness program

Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas): a Historical Review With Relevance to Population Size in Sarawak

Green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) are using selected Sarawak sandy beaches for nesting. Its small-scale conservation efforts have started since the 1950s. However, the success of the effort is still debatable. Moreover, public participation in the conservation effort is still at an infancy stage. This study involved analysing nesting data of green turtles of Sarawak Turtle Islands (STIs) in terms of numbers of turtle landing, eggs collected, eggs incubated, and eggs hatched for Sarawak’s green turtle population from 1949 to 2016 with addition of estimation of the egg-laying females and their remigration interval. There was a sharp decline in terms of number of turtle landings from 1949 to the 1970s. The exact cause of this pattern could only be confirmed from old articles of historical value due to limited information on the events happening during those 30 years period. From 1980 to 2016, the annual nesting trend of turtles on STIs shows irregular fluctuation pattern and remigration interval of every 3 to 4 years with internesting frequency of 3. Turtle eggs were harvested annually, with a 36-year average of 223,558 eggs per year. Detailed analysis for data 1980 to 2016 shows that the lowest percentage of eggs incubated was in 1981 (20.4 %) and starting from the year 1991, egg incubation at STIs reached between 90 to 100 percent. There is an upward trend of egg hatching rate for the past 36 years, especially from the 1990s to 2000s, with the latest seven years average of 60%. The results imply that conservation of green turtle in Sarawak have been successful at different levels. However, there is still a need for relevant state agencies to modify and step-up efforts related to conservation of green turtles in Sarawak especially in terms of male:female ratio of hatchlings from STI’s hatcheries

Towards Automated Biometric Identification of Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas)

Passive biometric identification enables wildlife monitoring with minimal disturbance. Using a motion-activated camera placed at an elevated position and facing downwards, images of sea turtle carapaces were collected, each belonging to one of sixteen Chelonia mydas juveniles. Then, co-variant and robust image descriptors from these images were learned, enabling indexing and retrieval. In this paper, several classification results of sea turtle carapaces using the learned image descriptors are presented. It was found that a template-based descriptor, i.e. Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) performed much better during classification than keypoint-based descriptors. For our dataset, a high-dimensional descriptor is a must because of the minimal gradient and color information in the carapace images. Using HOG, we obtained an average classification accuracy of 65%.

Towards Automated Biometric Identification of Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas)

Passive biometric identification enables wildlife monitoring with minimal disturbance. Using a motion-activated camera placed at an elevated position and facing downwards, we collected images of sea turtle carapace, each belonging to one of sixteen Chelonia mydas juveniles. We then learned co-variant and robust image descriptors from these images, enabling indexing and retrieval. In this work, we presented several classification results of sea turtle carapaces using the learned image descriptors. We found that a template-based descriptor, i.e., Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) performed exceedingly better during classification than keypoint-based descriptors. For our dataset, a high-dimensional descriptor is a must due to the minimal gradient and color information inside the carapace images. Using HOG, we obtained an average classification accuracy of 65%

Towards Automated Biometric Identification of Sea Turtles (Chelonia mydas)

Passive biometric identification enables wildlife monitoring with minimal disturbance. Using a motion-activated camera placed at an elevated position and facing downwards, we collected images of sea turtle carapace, each belonging to one of sixteen Chelonia mydas juveniles. We then learned co-variant and robust image descriptors from these images, enabling indexing and retrieval. In this work, we presented several classification results of sea turtle carapaces using the learned image descriptors. We found that a template-based descriptor, i.e., Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) performed exceedingly better during classification than keypoint-based descriptors. For our dataset, a high-dimensional descriptor is a must due to the minimal gradient and color information inside the carapace images. Using HOG, we obtained an average classification accuracy of 65%

Phylogeography of the Sunda pangolin, Manis javanica: Implications for taxonomy, conservation management and wildlife forensics

The Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) is the most widely distributed Asian pangolin species, occurring across much of Southeast Asia and in southern China. It is classified as Critically Endangered and is one of the most trafficked mammals in the world, which not only negatively impacts wild Sunda pangolin populations but also poses a potential disease risk to other species, including humans and livestock. Here, we aimed to investigate the species' phylogeography across its distribution to improve our understanding of the species' evolutionary history, elucidate any taxonomic uncertainties and enhance the species' conservation genetic management and potential wildlife forensics applications. We sequenced mtDNA genomes from 23 wild Sunda pangolins of known provenance originating from Malaysia to fill sampling gaps in previous studies, particularly in Borneo. To conduct phylogenetic and population genetic analyses of Sunda pangolins across their range, we integrated these newly generated mitochondrial genomes with previously generated mtDNA and nuclear DNA data sets (RAD‐seq SNP data). We identified an evolutionarily distinct mtDNA lineage in north Borneo, estimated to be ~1.6 million years divergent from lineages in west/south Borneo and the mainland, comparable to the divergence time from the Palawan pangolin. There appeared to be mitonuclear discordance, with no apparent genetic structure across Borneo based on analysis of nuclear SNPs. These findings are consistent with the ‘out of Borneo hypothesis’, whereby Sunda pangolins diversified in Borneo before subsequently migrating throughout Sundaland, and/or a secondary contact scenario between mainland and Borneo. We have elucidated possible taxonomic issues in the Sunda/Palawan pangolin complex and highlight the critical need for additional georeferenced samples to accurately apportion its range‐wide genetic variation into appropriate taxonomic and conservation units. Additionally, these data have improved forensic identification testing involving these species and permit the implementation of geographic provenance testing in some scenarios