Celebrating World Turtle Day

Today is World Turtle Day – and I’m very excited to be celebrating my first one as Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef!

It’s a time to celebrate these majestic creatures and recommit ourselves to working to protect them and their habitats.

This year we’re celebrating one special little green turtle who has escaped two near-death experiences has been recently released again to the wild. In October 2016, the juvenile turtle (pictured) was found entangled in fishing line and hooked.

It was taken to Sea World where it was rehabilitated, tagged and released 23 days later. Six years almost to the day later it was found floating in a netted swimming enclosure in poor health, with a large, healing boat strike wound on its carapace.

It was again taken to Sea World and nursed back to good health. Seven months later, it was strong and healthy once again and was released back into the wild. Let’s hope it has a long, healthy and incident free life from now on.

Today we also celebrate all the rehabilitation centres and the dedicated people from the turtle volunteer groups who provide care and conservation support for marine turtles across the state.

Turtle volunteers take on vital roles including responding to reports of sick, injured, or stranded turtles, supporting specialist organisations and vets to rehabilitate turtles, and gather important stranding data to help shape long-term conservation efforts. To all of you: Thank you!

Check out my News page to keep up to date with what’s happening in our community.