“A growing body of studies in recent years has shown that, thanks in part to decades of diligent conservation work, turtles are not just holding on — their populations are, in many cases, exploding.

Researchers led by Professor Graeme Hays of Deakin University in Melbourne this year compiled 61 datasets of nesting locations from around the world. They found just five sites where populations were declining. In 28, they were increasing — often dramatically.

Cabo Verde’s Sal Island, off the northwest coast of Africa, the number of loggerhead nests has increased to 35,000 in 2020 from 500 in 2008 — a 70-fold improvement. In Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean leased to a US naval base, a drone survey in 2021 found the highest densities of hawksbills anywhere on the planet.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the Kemp’s ridley — a breadboard-sized reptile that’s considered the most endangered sea turtle — has gone from 702 nests in 1985 to 17,000 in 2022. An analysis in 2023 discovered as many as 150,000 green turtle nests on three uninhabited reefs in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, an area that had previously been overlooked.”

From Bloomberg.