The remarkable recovery of sea turtles around the world has taken another hopeful leap forward, with new findings showing that more than one million olive ridley turtle nests were counted along India’s western coastline this year. The figure, reported by NPR, is nearly ten times higher than the numbers documented two decades ago, offering a powerful example of how long-term conservation can reverse even the most worrying declines.
Olive ridley turtles are the most abundant sea turtle species globally, yet they remain listed as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In India, their nesting beaches stretch across states such as Maharashtra and Odisha, where they have long been part of both local ecology and coastal culture. At the Velas Turtle Festival last April, thousands of visitors gathered to witness the unforgettable sight of baby turtles dragging themselves across the sand toward the sea, cheered on by volunteers and families who return each year to celebrate their survival.
This festival is just one of several initiatives driven by dedicated conservation groups determined to protect the species. Each January, cameras and volunteers record where female turtles lay their eggs. Conservationists then carefully move the eggs to secure hatcheries, shielding them from predators like dogs, lizards and shorebirds. When it is time for the hatchlings to emerge, they are guided safely to the ocean by trained teams, ensuring that as many as possible begin their perilous journey at sea.
Two decades ago, the situation looked far more dire. Kartik Shanker, one of India’s leading sea turtle researchers, recalls a time when the entire Indian coastline recorded only around one hundred thousand nests in a season. With just one in a thousand hatchlings surviving to adulthood, such numbers were alarming. In the town of Velas, where the turtles had not been seen for years, hope returned unexpectedly in 2000 when a single egg was discovered. Shanker urged local officials to act immediately, arguing that the lone nest signaled that females would eventually return if the beaches were protected.
The town responded with a series of measures that have since become a model for community-led conservation. Coastal construction was restricted, seasonal fishing bans were implemented and protected zones were created along key nesting beaches. A paid team was also employed to keep the coast free of plastic waste, which turtles often mistake for jellyfish, their preferred food.
According to Shanker, these interventions have transformed the coastline. During the most recent nesting season, the turtles dug an estimated one million nests, a number he describes as “crazy high” considering how close some beaches once came to losing the species entirely.
The resurgence of India’s olive ridleys also mirrors good news from elsewhere in the world. In October, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced that the green sea turtle is no longer classified as Endangered, after decades of steady recovery across the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Similar success stories have emerged from Greece and Southeast Asia, where coordinated conservation actions have helped restore turtle populations once considered critically threatened.
For scientists, turtle nests remain one of the most reliable indicators of population health, since the true number of animals in the open ocean is notoriously difficult to measure. Even so, the upward trend offers compelling evidence that protective measures from fishing restrictions to beach clean-up programs can yield dramatic results.
As Bryan Wallace, a member of the IUCN team, told NPR, “We went from being deeply worried about green turtle populations to watching their numbers rise over several decades. They are not entirely out of the woods yet, but this shows that when we take the right steps, conservation works.”
The recovery of the olive ridley is a reminder that even small communities can spark large-scale environmental change when science, local stewardship and sustained effort come together.