Disney Celebrates 20 Years of Sea Turtle Conservation Efforts
It’s Earth Month, and Disney is celebrating in a variety of ways! There are a lot of things going on in Animal Kingdom, which are also being combined with the 25th anniversary of the park.
Disney has also been talking a lot about their Planet Possible initiative by taking over Disney Parks Blog this month with various posts about what they’re doing for the environment. Today, we found out more about Disney’s efforts to help save the sea turtles!
20 Years of Sea Turtle Conservation
During this Earth Month, Disney is highlighting their sea turtle conservation efforts of the two decades. This year is the 20th year of sea turtle conservation efforts at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort in Florida.
The Disney Conservation team has recorded more than 20,000 sea turtle nests in their survey route since the program began. This haws resulted in an amazing 1.5 million sea turtle hatchlings taking their first flipper strokes on the beach!
Disney achieved this outcome by spending almost 19,000 HOURS surveying the 5-mile stretch of beach at the Resort, as well as connecting thousands of guests and the public to the turtles in responsible and impactful ways. They also participated in a statewide network committed to standardized data collection, and conducted innovative research exploring our relationship with sea turtles and how to best protect them into the future.
Disney says that collectively, they have seen a remarkable recovery of green sea turtles in Florida, which is a huge thing to be celebrated! But, the future of loggerhead turtles still remains uncertain.
As Disney says, conservation — especially sea turtle conservation — is a long game. Twenty years might seem like a long time, but the lifespan of a sea turtle is much longer.
Sea turtles face a lot of various threats, which are almost ALL caused by humans. Saving them takes innovation, creativity, persistence, and collaboration.
Disney says that along with their conservation partners around the world, they are committed to protecting these ancient animals on their timetable. The Disney Conservation Fund continues to support innovative sea turtle research.
Some of this research includes a solar-powered fishing net from Arizona State University. This kind of net helps to minimize sea turtle bycatch in fisheries.
Then there’s Team BEACH, which is a global human behavior change network to save sea turtles. Disney’s Conservation team continues to build the communities on the front lines of conservation through Team BEACH in collaboration with The Oceanic Society and State of the World’s Turtles.
At Disney’s Vero Beach Resort, Disney’s teams continue to show up each and every day of sea turtle nesting season to keep up with the local monitoring and conservation efforts.
Sea turtles will show up on this beach, make a nest, and lay about 120 eggs the size of ping pong balls into the sand. The eggs will then hatch in two months, and the turtles will do their best to dash into the ocean.
Then, 30 years from now, the females will return to start the process over again. As Disney says, it’s a little bit like magic.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done, despite these great conservation results. When we take a step back and look at it from a global perspective, the conservation status of sea turtles is clear, and it’s a lot more dire.
Florida’s loggerhead sea turtles make up 40% of the entire global population. And, other nesting aggregations are in steep decline due to fisheries bycatch, direct harvest, and impacts from climate change.
The loggerhead population in Southeast Florida is the largest and the most stable, but Disney says we still have not seen true signs of recovery.
For more on Disney’s to sea turtle conservation efforts, you can watch Season 2 of “Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom,” which is available right now on Disney+.
Stay tuned for more Disney Earth Month news and updates!