[Anonymous]

Sexy Posters to Protect Mexico’s Endangered Turtles
MEXICO CITY (SEP 05) –
Sex sells everything from diet products to car tires, but Mexican
authorities have found a new use for posters of scantily dressed young
women: protecting endangered sea turtles.

An advertisement campaign featuring an Argentine model casting a sexy
gaze is to be launched in September in the southern state of Guerrero
to dispel myths that sea turtle eggs are an aphrodisiac,
environmentalists said on Thursday.

“My man doesn’t need turtle eggs. Because he knows they don’t make him
more potent,” reads the poster, aimed at stopping poachers from
stealing eggs.

Every year, tens of thousands of turtles come ashore to lay their eggs
on Mexico’s Pacific and Caribbean beaches. Many fall prey to poachers
who kill the females, extract the eggs from their wombs and sell them
as a supposed aphrodisiac.

But the posters have outraged a government body defending women’s
rights, which says using images of women to raise consciousness is
degrading, even if it is for a good cause.

Earlier this month, poachers bludgeoned and chopped to death some 80
protected Olive Ridley sea turtles for their eggs and left their shells
scattered on a Pacific beach in Mexico.

[Author]

September 22, 2005 at 10:14 AM