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  Yahoo News 12 Jul 07
Malaysia to try to clone threatened turtles

Yahoo News 12 Jul 07
Malaysia could clone endangered leatherback turtles
Scientists in Malaysia could try to clone the critically endangered leatherback sea turtle, the world's largest living reptile, if other efforts to conserve it fail, a report said Thursday.

"We are worried about the dwindling number of leatherback turtles," Junaidi Che Ayub, the director-general of the Fisheries Department, was quoted as saying in the New Straits Times newspaper.

"Although some have been returning to our shores to nest, their eggs have been infertile and do not hatch," he said in the report.

The option to clone leatherbacks, the world's largest turtles, is part of a 32-million-ringgit (9.3-million-dollar) study to save the species from extinction, the paper said.

Leatherbacks drew large crowds to the coast of Terengganu state in eastern Malaysia during the 1960s, as tourists marvelled at nesting females. But they have been hunted for their meat and shells and many get entangled and die in fishing nets in the sea, which has brought the creature to the verge of extinction.

The option to clone leatherbacks would be studied over five years, Junaidi said, in a project involving local and foreign experts, who will test the technique on abundant green turtles first.

"Once we have perfected the technique, we will apply it to leatherback turtles as they are a more complicated species in the turtle family," Junaidi said.

Experts say the number of nesting leatherback turtles in the Pacific has plummeted to 5,000 from an estimated 91,000 in 1980.

At least 40 conservationists, scientists and officials from the Asian Development Bank are to meet in Terengganu next week to develop a conservation plan to save leatherbacks in the Pacific region.

Yahoo News 12 Jul 07
Malaysia to try to clone threatened turtles

Malaysia is launching a $9 million project to try to clone some of its threatened leatherback turtles in a last-ditch bid to save them from extinction.

Malaysian agricultural and veterinary experts will join scientists in domestic and foreign universities on the five-year project, the New Straits Times reported on Thursday.

Junaidi Che Ayub, chief of Malaysia's fisheries department, said the cloning procedure would first be carried out on green turtles, which are abundant in Malaysia's northeastern state of Terengganu, where the leatherbacks nest.

"Once we have perfected the technique, we will apply it to leatherback turtles as they are a more complicated species in the turtle family," the paper quoted Junaidi as saying.

Rantau Abang in Terengganu used to be the nesting home of one of the seven largest leatherback populations in the world but its population has declined by more than 99 percent since the 1960s, global conservation group WWF says on its Malaysia Web site.

Leatherbacks, known to scientists as Dermochelys coriacea, get their name from their leathery carapace, and have distinctive long front flippers, the site said.

They face threats such as the loss of nesting and feeding places, excessive egg-collection, fatal entangling in fishing nets, pollution and coastal development, it added.

Cloning animals involves taking the nuclei of cells from adults and fusing them into other egg cells that are implanted into a surrogate mother.

One of the most famous cloned animals, Dolly the sheep, was born in 1996. She was later euthanized at the age of 8 because of a degenerative lung condition.

($1 = 3.449 Malaysian Ringgit)
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