U.S. Formally Accuses Japan of Trading in Imperiled Turtles

The Bush Administration formally accused Japan on Wednesday of commercial trading in endangered hawksbill sea turtles, clearing the way for President Bush to restrict the import of any wildlife products from Japan.

The action is the first ever taken under a 1977 law authorizing the President to impose sanctions against countries that violate an international convention banning trade in endangered species. It was taken after months of pressure from environmental groups and separate investigations by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Today’s certification is a wake-up call to Japan,” National Wildlife Federation counsel Robert Irvin said. “The United States is giving notice that, like the days of killing whales for scrimshaw and elephants for ivory, the days of killing endangered sea turtles for their shells to be made into combs and eyeglass frames are over.”

The formal certification that sets the stage for sanctions was signed by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher after a last round of talks with Japanese officials earlier this week proved fruitless.

The hawksbill, considered the most beautiful of all the endangered sea turtles, has been carried on the U.S. list of endangered species since 1975.

There is no accepted estimate of the surviving population, but Marydele Donnelly, a sea turtle expert at the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation, said that about 15,000 to 25,000 nests are created each year, largely on beaches in the Caribbean.

Japan, according to the Department of the Interior, imported the shells of at least 234,000 hawksbills during the 1980s and more than 18,000 last year, using them to fashion folk art objects, eyeglasses and cigarette lighters.

Altogether, the Japanese may have imported parts of more than 2 million sea turtles over the last two decades, according to estimates by the Earth Island Institute’s Sea Turtle Restoration Project. The toll includes endangered olive ridley turtles, whose skins are used for shoes, belts and purses.

“The purchase of sea turtles by Japan is responsible for the greatest killing of endangered species in the world,” said Todd Steiner, director of the turtle restoration project.

Negotiations between Japanese officials and representatives of the Interior and Commerce departments had gone on for months, Administration sources said, and continued until Monday night.

Under the so-called Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen’s Protective Act, President Bush now has 60 days to notify Congress of what sanctions, if any, he proposes to take against Japan.