They came in the dead of night and pulled off the first heist on Baguan Island this year. The thieves, possibly armed, quietly left onboard a boat taking about 600 pieces of green turtle eggs from this protected wildlife sanctuary 1,000 kilometers southwest of Manila. “They ransacked six nests,” said Orlan Maliwanag, Sea Turtle Corridor staff of the nongovernment Conservation International-Philippines. A nest can contain from 40 to 140 eggs of the endangered sea animal. For CI-Philippines, every egg is essential for the global bid to reverse a steady population decline of green turtles (Chelonia mydas). There is no clear estimate how many are left in the ocean but the International Union for the Conservation of Nature said their number could have plummeted by more than 50 percent over the past decade.

Maliwanag, D. (2010, August 22). Turtle Islands: Hundreds of nautical miles away from justice. Philippine Daily Inquirer, p. A14.