Puerto Rican Resort Planned for Sea Turtle Habitat

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, May 19, 2004 (ENS) - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is failing to adequately assess the impact of a proposed resort on crucial endangered sea turtle habitat, according to a lawsuit filed by the National Wildlife Federation and a coalition of Puerto Rican public interest groups.

The plaintiffs contend the massive Four Seasons San Miguel resort proposed for construction on a pristine beach in Puerto Rico's Northeastern Ecological Corridor (NEC) will harm endangered leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles.

Both species are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and classified by the IUCN-World Conservation Union Red List as critically endangered.

Some scientists fear these species could be extinct within 30 years without stronger conservation efforts worldwide.

The Northeastern Ecological Corridor, a 3,200 acre coastal fringe, is one of Puerto Rico's last remaining ecologically significant unprotected areas.

Located in the municipalities of Luquillo and Fajardo, the area is inhabited by more 40 endangered, threatened and endemic species and contains coastal wetlands, mangroves and a bioluminescent lagoon.

Critics say the resort would blanket more than four of the seven miles of contiguous beach in the Northeastern Ecological Corridor and would draw some 5,000 people to this currently isolated region.

The planned resort would cover 1,263 acres and would include 250 hotel rooms, 175 condo hotel and timeshare units, 1,025 single and multi-family units, a 27 hole golf course, a golfing club, golf maintenance facilities, a tennis center, tennis courts and a water sports center.

"Sea turtles are extremely sensitive to human disturbance, and this mega-resort would be devastating," said Randy Sargent, wildlife conservation counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

In 2003 alone, the Puerto Rican Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER) recorded nearly 400 leatherback nests and estimated that there were as many as 30 hawksbill nests on the NEC's beaches.

In 1992, DNER requested that this area be designated a nature reserve. In 2002, participants of the Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation also requested that Puerto Rico designate the NEC as a nature reserve.

In addition to the leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles, the Northeastern Ecological Corridor is inhabited by the federally endangered Puerto Rican plain pigeon, the snowy plover, the brown pelican, the Puerto Rican boa and the West Indian manatee.

"Building a resort on this unspoiled beach would be like razing Old San Juan to build a giant strip mall," said Fernando Albornoz, regional organizer for the National Wildlife Federation. "It would be destroying one of Puerto Rico's great treasures."