A rare turtle has been left stranded in Wales due to executive orders signed by Donald Trump. Rhossi, a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, has been left in limbo after washing up on the Anglesey in 2023.
The turtle has since been nursed back to health and was ready to be released off the coast of the US. However, Trump recently signed orders to stop all foreign development assistance for three months, which paused all international marine turtle conservation work.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) froze funding for several organisations, including the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund. The group, which also lost 400 employees last month as part of Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of the government’s workforce, were set to play a key role in releasing Rhossi into the Gulf of Mexico.
Frankie Hobro, the owner and director of Anglesey Sea Zoo, said: “It is a huge problem – it’s very frustrating. Animal species don’t understand politics, they don’t understand boundaries and borders.
“We’d started to get a really successful repatriation regime in place. We thought we had things so they were running quite smoothly. We were going to fine-tune the process for future turtles.
“It’s very, very frustrating that’s been put on hold now really because of politics and this kind of sweeping decision and the far reaching affect it is having way beyond the states.”
Rhossi is the second Kemp’s ridley turtle that Anglesey Sea Zoo has rescued. They safely released Tally back into the wild in 2023.
Kemp’s ridley turtles are a critically endangered species with only around 7,000 females in existence. They are native to the Gulf of Mexico and must be released back into these waters.
Martha Williams, the former director of the USFWS, said: “I didn’t expect this administration to necessarily be friendly towards conservation. I have been surprised at the speed and the degree to which they have undermined decades of goodwill and work in the conservation sphere.”
She stood down from her role when Trump started his second term in the White House. Ms Williams described the cuts to nature prohects as “cruel”.
She said: “International work involved so little money, you know in the big scheme of things, small grants with enormous impact – enormous impact to communities.” She added: “Speak out – tell the stories, explain why this work is so important, and that it does impact people in a positive way.”
Ms Hobro said the zoo would try and find a way to get Rhossi home, but she is not sure when. She said: “We do have other options.
“We have the option possibly of working through Mexico, which is something we could do in the future and for future turtles.”
“But that would be a shame because we’ve got these great relationships with these wonderful whole conservation programmes for the species in Texas and the people we’ve been working with.
“It’s a matter of finding out how long it’s going to be on hold for and making a decision as to whether we can still push that through or whether we have to restart from a different angle.”