KARACHI, Nov 14: Over 500 students belonging to various city schools collected over 2,000 kilograms of rubbish from Sandspit, one of the important turtle nesting beaches, under its beach clean-up programme on Tuesday.

The programme, organized jointly by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the SSGC, was celebrated under the Indian Ocean South East Asia’s (IOSEA) “Year of the Turtle 2006.” Pakistan is a signatory to the IOSEA, which is an agreement on the conservation of the marine turtles.

The participating students belonged to the City District Government’s schools of North Karachi and Keamari Towns and WWF’s Community Girls School at the coastal Kakapir village. Bulk of the rubbish comprised plastic items, wrappers etc that have been left behind of the beachgoers.

Speakers on the occasion stressed the need for creating awareness among the beachgoers not to leave behind their garbage while visiting the beach and always try to dispose it off in an environment friendly way so that other stakeholders at the beach, like the marine turtles that come lay their eggs on the sandy beach did not face any difficulties.

They said that globally there were eight species of marine turtles and all of these were classified as endangered. Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) and Olive Ridley Turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) are the two species of marine turtles that nest along the Sandspit beach at the Karachi coast.

They said that these species are also protected under the Convention of the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Pakistan is also a signatory to CITES, which prohibited trade in turtles, turtle parts and eggs. The Government of Sindh has also declared Marine Turtles as ‘protected’ species.

They said that Sandspit was a globally important site for marine turtle nesting and the government as well as various non governmental organizations were making efforts to save the marine turtles that come to nest in the area.

Naeeem Akund of SSGC, Ghulam Qadir Shah of WWF, Sindh Wildlife Department’s Adnan Khan, Nuzhat Siddiqui, and others spoke.