

Since 1996, it's been illegal to remove turtle eggs from beaches in Costa Rica, said Beth Adubato, a New York Institute of Technology criminologist interested in crimes against wildlife. However, that hasn't stopped egg thieves — egg poaching is up 30 percent since the law was put in place, she told LiveScience.


"We see the trucks coming, we see the eggs being taken away, but we don't know how to stop it," she said.

There is no evidence to suggest that turtle eggs act as aphrodisiacs, and it's unclear how that belief originated. In fact, the turtle eggs are potentially unsafe for human consumption —in some cases they have been shown to have unsafe levels of heavy metals, Adubato said.


Adubato said she's worried for the future, because some locals view eggs as an important source of income, and don't realize that the egg poaching is a serious problem, since the turtles come to lay eggs in large numbers, she said. However, only a tiny fraction of the eggs laid survive to adulthood, and turtle populations cannot rebound quickly since the animals take years to become mature and reproduce, she added.

The four endangered species that lay their eggs on these beaches are leatherback, hawksbill, Olive Ridley and green sea turtles. Adubato's study found that on some beaches in the peninsula, up to half of the nests had their eggs stolen from them.


Related on LiveScience and MNN:
