Qatari children help give endangered turtles second chance

The Qatari programme was launched in 2003 and in the last five years has sent some 30,000 hatchlings into the sea. Photo: AFP

On a beach in northeastern Qatar, six-year-old Lolwa waves goodbye to two baby hawksbill turtles – a species that has a one- in-a-thousand chance of surviving to adulthood.

Predators, climate change, fishing nets and marine pollution all contributed to the classification of these narrow-beaked creatures as "critically endangered" in 1996.