Threats

There are various threats to the species' survival. Direct and directed threats to individual turtles include hunting of turtles for their flesh and shells and the harvesting of their eggs. More prevalent indirect threats include casualties due to turtles being injured by boat propellers, being caught as bycatch by fishermen's nets without TEDs, pollution and habitat destruction. Pollution effects would include direct-impact disturbances such as effluent from harbors near nesting sites. Habitat loss usually occurs due to human development of their nesting areas. Urban development of beaches, reclamation and an increased level of tourism are examples of such development.[3][2] An infectious tumor-causing disease known as fibropapillomatosis is also a problem in some green turtle populations. The disease kills a sizeable fraction of the turtles that it infects, though some turtles seem to be resistant to the disease

Because of these, the many populations of Chelonia mydas worldwide are in various states of vulnerability. The Mediterranean green turtle population is particularly listed as critically endangered.[3][29] In the East Pacific, green turtle subpopulations in Hawaii and Southern California have been designated threatened. Specific Mexican subpopulations are listed as endangered. In the Caribbean, the Florida nesting population is also listed as endangered. In the Indian Ocean, the World Wide Fund for Nature has labeled nesting populations in Pakistan as "rare and declining."

Global conservation initiatives

Since 2004, Chelonia mydas has been classified by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as endangered. It is listed as classified under the EN A2bd criteria, which essentially states that the species' wild populations are facing a high risk of extinction because of several factors. These factors include a probably reduction of more than 50% in the size of the worldwide C. mydas population over the past decade. This was determined by using abundance indices and by projecting a potential level of exploitation of the species' numbers.

The species has been officially classified as an endangered species since 1982, when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listed Chelonia mydas as endangered.[47] Throughout various reassessments and subsequent publications, the conservation status of the turtle has not changed over time. The 1986,[48] 1988, [49] 1990[50] and 1994 editions of the IUCN Red List retained the species' endangered status.[51] In the landmark 1996 edition of the Red List, C. mydas remained listed as an endangered species.[52] In 2001, a petition was filed to delist the species as an endangered species. At the time, the species was listed as endangered under the strict EN A1abd criteria. The petitioner claimed that at the time, there was ample evidence to suggest that some green turtle populations were large, stable and in some cases, increasing. The IUCN Standards and Petitions Subcommittee determined in a ruling that visual counts of nesting females could not be considered as "direct observation" and thus downgraded the species' status as EN A1bd - retaining the turtle's endangered status.[53]