Forest dept officially insists that turtle eggs were not ‘stolen’ but ‘spoilt’, with no official evidence

MORJIM: The O Heraldo report, published on Monday, June 17, “Of 7,869 turtle eggs laid at Morjim, 2095, go ‘stolen’ evoked an interesting response from Forest Department. A senior Forest officer wasted no time in sending, through a scribbled note, and not an official letter, -through his Marine range Officer, Morjim, that the eggs, which O Heraldo noted as marked “stolen” in the register of the Turtle guards, were not stolen but “spoilt”.

A screenshot of a handwritten note was sent on WhatsApp to this reporter with these figures – 22,528 eggs laid, 15,146 released, 1,382 hatching dead and importantly 6,000 “spoilt”.

While the O Heraldo report stated the figures had specific dates for each entry, the scribbled so-called correct figures on a piece of rough paper had no dates.

“You must understand the staff manning the register must have made a mistake in the way they wrote. It is supposed to be written as spoilt eggs but by mistake, it came as stolen,” maintained Marine Range Officer, Gauns.

What is interesting is that the rest of the contents, and figures in the same guard register are not being challenged or called a mistake but just one specific column. It is not as if stolen and spoilt are very similar words and it is natural to mistake one for the other.

Here too, some doubts need to be raised. While the register at Morjim indicates that 334 hatchlings died, the new count mentions 1,382. Three officers from the Forest Department contacted since afternoon trying to explain, “the spelling /writing error” and all three requested anonymity. 

To seek further clarity, especially since the entries in the guard register were written by hand, O Heraldo sent a message asking if the stolen eggs were now being classified as spoilt. Or were the stolen eggs recovered and then got spoilt? The response to these questions was “No eggs were stolen”.

O Heraldo then sent a screenshot of the photo of the register sent by the Forest department staff at Morjim, based on which the first report of stolen eggs was filed

 O Heraldo asked: Why does this report from your Morjim site, have a column on stolen eggs? 

The official’s response without addressing the issues directly was “Next time you run a story with numbers, kindly check from official sources for authenticity or clarification before publishing.” 

This is interesting since the Marine Range Officer himself said that the “mistake” was made by  the guards who couldn’t spell spoilt, so they wrote stolen. Though unbelievable, this was at least a response.

O Heraldo then said the senior officer would be quoted, and all the figures sent would be sourced to him. The Range Officer then hurriedly called up the reporter to say, “Please do not even refer to my name or quote me anywhere.”

The fact is the report was based on entries in the Turtle Guard register as the nesting site on Morjim. The forest department has not rejected those entries 

Moreover, changing the nomenclature from stolen to spoilt has not been officially explained. Moreover, if the entry in the guard register was incorrect or unclear, then the department could have easily issued an official statement saying that the column ‘stolen’ should be read as spoiled.

The big issue here is, the mystery behind the Forest Department officers reluctance to come on record,while insisting that the figures scribbled by them were true and not those that were entered in the register, by the men who guard the site.

Former NGO head retracts statement

Sarita Fernandes, former director, Morjim Sea Turtle Trust had stated on June 16, “That means poaching has been allowed and it is a crime. It is sad that despite the turtle guards being there, people managed to steal the eggs. This is a crime under the Wild Life Protection Act 1972 and I hope the Forest Department will initiate action.” 

On Tuesday, June 18, she retracted her statement and stated,

“This is to inform you that my name and quote has been added to an article by 

O Heraldo, without clear description on what the article was about. I would like to request an urgent retraction of my name and quote from the article titled, ‘Of 7869 turtle eggs laid at Morjim, 2095 go stolen’.”

“When the article was published, several locals and officials called me citing the data was misinterpreted from spoiled to stolen. They also informed me it was rough data of a handwritten notebook and not digital data. I am unsure which is true since I do not have the source of data in any public domain or through RTI. To this effect, I am writing to your office to please retract my name and quotes,” Fernandes said.