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Today will be a significant day for reptiles in Sri Lanka with Rekawa in the south being declared the first marine turtle sanctuary in the country followed by the launch of the first turtle satellite tracking programme in this ‘Year of Sea Turtles’ designated by the Indian Ocean South East Asian (IOSEA) MoU Secretariat.

The official ceremony of the declaration of Sri Lanka's first wildlife sanctuary for marine turtles will be held at 7.30 a.m. at the Rekawa office of the Turtle Conservation Project with the participation of Agricultural Development Minister Chamal Rajapaksa. The events are being organized by TCP in collaboration with the Department of Wildlife Conservation.

The satellite tracking programme which will entail the attaching of 6 Sirtrak satellite transmitters to the carapaces of female green turtles shortly after they have nested at the rookery along with the declaration of the sanctuary will help conservation efforts.

The tracking programme, for the first time, will shed light on the inter-nesting habitat, post-nesting migratory routes and foraging grounds of adult female green turtles (Chelonia mydas) nesting in Sri Lanka and strengthen research already being carried out by the TCP through flipper-tagging and genetic sampling studies.The turtles will be tracked via the Argos satellite system for an anticipated average of 10 months per animal. Through analysis of the data generated by the tags, this project will provide a valuable insight into the ecology of Sri Lanka’s green turtles throughout their range and will be critical to understanding and addressing potential local threats at sea, as well as the impacts of incidental catch in regional high seas fisheries and coastal fisheries in other areas of their range, a TCP spokesman said.Once tagged, the real-time tracking maps of the turtles’ journeys will be available live at www.seaturtle.org/tracking. The programme involves collaboration among groups of three continents.

The project will be filmed by the BBC Natural History Unit as a 30-minute documentary in a new BBC series featuring successful conservation projects to be telecast in September 2007.