Summary of the project:

This report covers the first 9^th months of activity following the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2023 that was focused on turtles and an award from Animal Friends Pet Insurance. The total budget for spend on turtle health and welfare, in alignment with the aims, is £30,085. This report covers activities between 1^st Jan and 30^th Sept 2023 and cost £16,583.

2024 has been a year when the current phase of a partnership came to an end (ARCHELON SeaTurtle Rescue Centre), others continue to develop (e.g. Wildlife Division, Ghana) and others are at preliminary stages (ReefWatch, India and a UK network dealing with cold stunned turtles).

In ARCHELON, staff are only contacting WVI Veterinary Partners about really difficult cases and there is a new local wildlife vet, with some knowledge and an interest in turtles, that is now volunteering periodically for them. They therefore have a huge amount of knowledge and skills in house - which was the point of all the training and support!

After some training and consultation with WVI Veterinary Partner Matthew Rendle, the Wildlife Division in Ghana are collecting data from which to determine why turtles are turning up very sick and dying on their beaches. We wait to hear whether they require any further help from WVI and what form that might take.

A visit to Reefwatch centres in India and preliminary health and welfare workshop is being planned for January/February 2025. This will give a better idea of their resources and the health of the turtles coming into their care. We shall encourage the collection of shared data from the outset to better measure the impact made.

Below are the aims as stated in the Big Give Christmas Challenge 2023 campaign.

Aim 1: Strengthening veterinary capabilities

1)     Sealife Brighton hosted a one day workshop in February 2024 on the health and welfare of rescued turtles for interested veterinary professionals, conservationists, biologists and students. Matthew Rendle and Tania Monreal both gave a number of presentations. Mat Westfield of Marine Environmental Monitoring gave a presentation of turtle strandings in the UK.

Outcome: 35 people attended the workshop. As a result of Matt, Tania, Mat and Joe from Sealife being in the same place at the same time, WVI is facilitating the production of a handbook for dealing with UK turtle strandings. We aim to deliver training in 2025 in how to handle cold stunned turtles to aquarium staff, vets, and those collecting the stranded turtles.

2)     Matthew Rendle visited ARCHELON Sea Turtle Rescue Centre in September. Matt was able to go through the most complex cases with the Rescue Centre team which now includes volunteer wildlife vet Noi. This included taking Noi through placing a feeding tube in one of the chronic cases. Everyone was very anxious because they had only done this with expert turtle vet Tania Monreal. However, thanks to Matt’s ability to stay calm and teach whilst carrying out procedures, the intervention went well and confidence within the team grew. Matthew was also able to give training in the normobaric chamber that he had been developing with Burtons (see below) and follow up training on the anaesthesia machine that Matt got working in a previous visit.

Outcomes: wildlife vet Noi has more confidence in putting in feeding tubes into very sick turtles; the normobaric chamber will reduce the time turtles spend in the centre, thereby reducing the overall trauma they experience.

In development:

3)    An initial trip and training are being planned with Reefwatch India, due to take place in early 2025. The aim is to improve the health and therefore welfare of turtles in their care and to encourage them to investigate the reasons why turtles are ending up on their beaches with a view to mitigate these – either themselves or ensuring the information is available for other organisations to use.

‍Remote support and project development continued throughout 2024 with ARCHELON Sea Turtle Rescue Centre, Greece, Reefwatch India and the Wildlife Division, Ghana. This balance between remote support, project development and face to face visits are key to the long term, sustained impact. At the moment, there is a lot of project development as we come to the end of the current partnership with ARCHELON, there is a pause in the turtle support in Ghana while they carry out the research and request further help, and set up a new partnership with Reefwatch in India. In addition, there were a few leads following the ISTS meeting in March 2023 that were investigated and came to nothing.

‍Aim 2: Monitor and tackle disease in vulnerable species

1)    Supported the Ghanaian Wildlife Division develop methodology when collecting data and samples from turtles on the beaches of Songor UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Ghana. In addition, Matt has been providing remote support to the team undertaking post-mortems and data collection.

‍Outcome: Research is being carried out by Wildlife Division and/or university staff.

2)    We continue to discuss analysis of data collected through the Rescue Centre with ARCHELON and as of the end of October, there were no definite plans to take this forward.

Outcome: Matt has provided methodology with which to collect data systematically and analyse it statistically.

‍Aim 3: Working in partnership

1)    Reconnect the Wildlife Division with Dr Andrews Agyekumhene, University of Ghana, who is also working on turtles and who is president of the next International Sea Turtle Symposium.

Outcome: The University and Wildlife Division are working together to investigate why they are getting so many dead and dying turtles on their coastline.

2)    Discussions are ongoing with the Wildlife Division, University of Ghana, Sea Turtle Rescue Alliance and Daniela Friggi as to whether WVI can assist with, or present, during a health and welfare stream at the International Sea Turtle Symposium 2025.

Outcome: discussions ongoing

3)    Matthew Rendle worked with Keith Simpson, Burgess, to develop a normobaric chamber in order for ARCHELON Sea Turtle Rescue Centre to provide oxygen therapy to assist wound recovery in their turtles. This therapy is very new and unproven in turtles, though the preliminary results in ARCHELON are extremely promising.

Outcome: anecdotal evidence provided to Matt seems to demonstrate that the chamber is having a significant positive influence in the outcome of four cases since September.

‍Aim 4: Advocate the need for veterinary medicine knowledge to underpin biodiversity conservation.

1)    SeaLife Brighton organised an open day and a conservation evening for the public to listen to marine experts – including Matthew on behalf of WVI.

2)    Matthew attended the International Sea Turtle Symposium 2024 in Thailand. Matt presented nutritional management of injured sea turtles at that rescue and rehabilitation stream of the symposium and met a number of key people, including Dr Andrews Agyekumhene, University of Ghana, who is president of the 2025 symposium. There was much interest in WVI’s work that lead to quite a bit of discussion following the meeting.

3)    Olivia gave a talk at the BIAZA Conservation Conference and the BIAZA Annual Meeting on how the partnership between Twycross Zoo, WVI and Matt Rendle enabled us to give the two vets from the Ghanaian Wildlife Division intense training in primate medicine. Although WVI’s work with the Wildlife Division, primarily focusses on primates (white naped mangabeys), the same vets are responsible for all Ghanaian wildlife, including the turtles that are dying on the beaches. The second half of the talk was about the proposed survey and post mortems to discover more.

Aim 5: Raise awareness of the interconnectedness of the health of ecosystems, animals and people, and the natural balance between species.

Matt is regularly consulted for our external communications, both turtle based, as below, and answering the executive team’s wildlife health medicine questions.

https://www.facebook.com/WildlifeVetsInternational/videos/852645433647946

https://www.facebook.com/WildlifeVetsInternational/posts/pfbid0zfN1XK38RKz4M86UTJuT6QGi8yzAy5iVzY175p52ipEecFPFpxn9VLLKyxQ5Qwzxl

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