Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what funding the Government has provided to projects seeking to protect turtles.

The UK Government has provided funding of around £550,000 to protect turtles.

The Darwin Initiative has funded projects seeking to protect turtles in developing countries and in the UK Overseas Territories. A current Darwin project is promoting the conservation and sustainable use of marine turtles in Southwest Madagascar. Another, led by the University of Exeter, is working in Peru to find a solution to the thousands of endangered turtles who die as a result of gillnet fisheries around the world by employing the use of light emitting diodes (LEDs).

Through the Overseas Territories Environment and Climate fund, also known as Darwin Plus, Defra has funded a project in the Cayman Islands assessing how best to reduce threats to wild marine turtles.

The Flagship Species Fund, a partnership between Defra and Fauna and Flora International (FFI), has supported all six of the world’s hard-shelled marine turtle species and most recently funded a project supporting sea turtle conservation through applied research in Anguilla.