Green turtle nests at Sabah's Turtle Islands have tripled since the 1970s

Green turtles are one of the few monitored animals moving the right way on the global list. The Straits Times reported on October 8, 2026, from Mataking in Sabah, that the species has gone from endangered to least concern, even as WWF's Living Planet Report, released the same day, found a 73 percent drop in the average size of monitored wildlife populations since 1970. About half of the vertebrates in that report are stable or increasing.

In Sabah, the local record is sharper. Nesting at the Turtle Islands has tripled since the 1970s, to more than 20,000 nests a year, Sabah Parks director Maklarin Lakim told the paper. The islands have been protected since 1977, and the state banned turtle meat and eggs in 1997.

A lot of the daily work is small and local. On Omadal, Sitti Rasah Abdul and a women's cooperative of about 20 people have moved eggs into a hatchery since 2012. They started with WWF and now pay for the work themselves, putting 10 percent of their handicraft and catering income into it. At Mataking Reef Resort, owner Sophia Sie said the hatchery collected about 600 eggs in 2006 and about 36,000 now, and that about a tenth of the staff work on conservation. The paper noted that only about one hatchling in a thousand lives to nest, around age 20. The nesting numbers are a recovery. They are not a claim that the danger is over.