Source : Inquirer, Philippines, 06 Sep '07
By : Julie Alipala
  

"I don't know why…In fact, we have a memorandum of agreement with the World Wildlife [Fund], yet foreign and even local poachers could still penetrate the island and slaughter our turtles," Tawi-tawi Governor Sadikul Sahali told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

Another agreement has also been reached between officials of Tawi-tawi and the Malaysian government for the protection and preservation of the turtles.

On September 1, Sahali said, Taiwanese poachers slaughtered more than a thousand turtles.

"Mahigit isang libo ang kinatay nila puro pa naman mga inahin at ang iba nangingitlog pa [They slaughtered around a thousand turtles, mostly gravid and egg-laying females]," Sahali said.

Aside from the slaughtered turtles, Sahali said more than a thousand young turtles and a still undetermined number of boxes of turtle eggs were also seized from a Taiwanese boat with the body marking "01087."

But Rear Admiral Emilio Marayag, Naval Forces Western Mindanao chief, said the unit in Taganak, Turtle Island reported that only nine turtles, 200 turtle shells, two live sharks and more than 10,000 turtle eggs were recovered from the Taiwanese poachers.

An earlier report said a composite forces of police, Philippine Navy and Coast Guard personnel who chanced upon the Chinese fishing vessel confiscated 19 live turtles, 55 fresh turtle carcasses and 50 more dried carcasses, and 10,000 turtle eggs from the fishermen who did not resist arrest.

Marayag said residents tipped off authorities about the entry of the foreigners, who could not show any legal papers allowing them to fish in the area when confronted by authorities.

He said the 19 crew members of the boat were arrested and are detained at the Tawi-Tawi provincial police office.

But Sahali said "legal papers" are meaningless because Turtle Island is a protected sanctuary.

"There is no such thing as legal or illegal papers [that] could allow them to get inside [the protected area] and kill and harvest our turtles," he said.

Alejandre Ampatuan, director of the Regional Port Management Authority (RPMA) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), told the Inquirer that "only influential people with positions in government could allow such operations, in either non-protected [or] protected areas."

The problem, Ampatuan said, is that some of the poachers have "influential government officials" as protectors.

Ampatuan said the ARMM government had already issued an executive order for the operation of RPMA, "but the said order has no teeth yet. We are still drafting the guidelines and manual of operations so that we can have more power to arrest and jail either local or foreign operators [engaged] in poaching and [illegal] fishing, and no amount of influencing from influential protectors could stop us."