Conservation Practices and the Gene Pool 



Some interesting technical objections may be raised. If one 

 saves eggs or hatchlings that would have otherwise been destroyed 

 by predators, is one distorting the genetic constitution of the 

 population? If one reburies doomed eggs in a hatchery, is one 

 also reburying genes for poor nest-site selection? If one saves 

 eggs from raccoons, is one relaxing selective pressures against 

 anti-predator disguises? Let us consider the matter of doomed 

 eggs as an example. Sea turtles have been here for a very long 

 time. If a nest-site selection strategy that included laying 

 eggs below the high tide line was non-adaptive, such misplacement 

 of about a third of the nests in the Guianas today seems 

 unlikely. Sufficient generations would have passed for this 

 behavior to be selected out. The overall nesting strategy of 

 laying eggs in a variety of places, some of which will be 

 successful, and of accepting the risk of having some eggs washed 

 away rather than laying all one's eggs too high up the beach 

 where later the hatchlings will encounter difficulties reaching 

 the sea seems more likely. Eckert (1987) found that there was 

 considerable variance in the distance individual leatherbacks 

 moved inland on different occasions before nesting. Her data 

 support a scatter nesting strategy. This implies that allowing 

 doomed eggs to contribute to the gene pool would not be harmful. 

 Further thought and research on this topic certainly are 

 desirable. 



However, suppose that despite these considerations, doomed 

 eggs were believed to have bad genes. Then what could be the 

 objections to taking the eggs and selling them? One cannot have 

 it both ways. Either these eggs are a source of valuable 

 recruits to the population, in which case protecting them can be 

 used to compensate for limited utilization, or, on the bad genes 

 argument, they are all available for use by people. 



One way or another high natural mortality means that turtle 

 eggs, or ranched turtles produced by these eggs, are available 

 for people. Unless the particular turtle population is 

 perilously low, the sooner these realities are incorporated into 

 management schemes, the safer turtles will be. 



Acknowledgment 



Support came from the Natural Sciences and Engineering 

 Research Council of Canada. 



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