Volunteer Kate von Schill observes a Flatback TurtleImagine a pristine beach all to yourself except for a few turtle tracks meandering up to the sand dunes.

For the West Pilbara Community Turtle Programme’s volunteers, this dream is a reality as they monitor the nesting and hatching patterns of the turtle population in the region between October and March.

Having grown up in the region, Cape Lambert Operator Peter Salinovich, who coordinates the program, remembers the thousands of turtle nests every year that could be seen along the West Pilbara coast line.

Today his team of 50 volunteers are lucky to encounter more than one or two turtles a season on some of the limited recreational beaches within the local area, due to the increasing dangers threatening the population.

With the turtle monitoring season soon to begin, Peter says there is an increasing need to make the community aware of the Hawksbill, Green and Flatback turtle population that lay their eggs along the beaches of the West Pilbara region.

“The turtles are faced with threats such as foxes and dogs digging up their eggs, cyclones causing high tides that waterlog the turtle nests, loss of habitat and cars driving on the beach and crushing the nests,” says Peter.

“Flatback turtles only breed and nest in Australia, so the security of their Australian nesting beaches is crucial for the species survival.”

Peter says turtles have always been part of his life, but in the early 1980s while working on fishing boats, he became alarmed by the number of dead turtles pulled up in the nets.

“I’ve worked with the Department of Conservation for more than 10 years to sustain the turtle population and now, with Rio Tinto’s involvement, we’ve been able to conduct further research into local turtle population patterns,” he says.

The West Pilbara Community Turtle Programme aims to monitor and promote the long-term survival of turtle populations in the region.

The programme was launched in 2005 by Pilbara Iron, the Department of Environment and Conservation and the local West Pilbara community and is a part of the Ningaloo Turtle Program.

Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) recently committed substantial funding towards the programme – a renewal of its previous contribution, where much-needed funding, training rooms and equipment were provided for the turtle program.

As coordinator, Peter is responsible for training the volunteers who are predominantly employees at Cape Lambert and their families.

“It’s a great way to get the community together and they love being able to combine going to the beach and preserving the turtle population,” he says.

Volunteers are trained over two days where they are taught to identify turtles and their tracks, how to spot a successful nest versus a false crawl and how to record the nests’ location.

At 5.30am each morning for the six monitoring months, they patrol the beach to monitor the previous night’s turtle activities.

In the early months of the season the turtles begin nesting, which can take up to two hours. The following morning volunteers scour the shoreline for tracks and work out whether eggs were laid or it was a false crawl.

Over the months that follow the volunteers monitor successful nesting attempts, turtle species, evidence of disturbance and predation and evidence of hatchling emergence. The data is then transferred to Exmouth and compared to previous year’s figures.