The Turtle Conservation And Education Center in Denpasar, Bali was founded to help protect turtles around Bali. The center executes a comprehensive strategy designed to eradicate illegal turtle trading on the island of Bali.
What Does the Turtle Conservation And Education Center Do?
The centre does so by hosting injured animals, collecting nests from tourist beaches, and buying eggs from locals ( preventing them from being consumed). Eggs are bred at the center and the hatchlings are raised for about one month and then released into the wild.
The center harnesses the potential education, tourism, conservation and research of turtles with a liberal sprinkling of business to give endangered turtles one more chance on Serangan.
TCEC is supported by WWF, Governor Bali, the mayor of Denpasar, municipality authorities, the Provincial Nature Resource Conservation Agency and the local community.
What to Expect When Visiting
This is not a huge tourist attraction, but rather a small center doing its best to conserve Bali’s turtle population. Tourists are invited to visit, but know that it’s a small trip—you’ll need no more than an hour.
Entrance is free to the Turtle Conservation And Education Center, but donations are encouraged and parking costs Rp 5K. A volunteer will give you a tour of the center and what it’s doing to further turtle conservation. Many turtles you see on the tour are rescued from the black market—they may be missing a fin, or have injured shell.
You’ll also go to the nursery, where you can see the recently hatched turtles.
And you’ll visit the resident turtle population—some are more than 90 years old. These are the turtles that would not be able to live in the sea independently due to injury.
The entire tour and visit takes 30 minutes or so—it’s a small space. You’ll spend longer if you adopt and release a baby turtle for Rp 230k.
What You Can Do to Help
The center nurses turtles back to health and travelers can adopt a turtle for release into the sea. You can give the adopted turtle back to nature with your own hands. Adopted and turtle release sessions run from April to September.
And as the center is run by volunteers, tourist donations also go a long way to helping keep the operations running.
For those staying in Bali longer-term, you can volunteer with the center.
If you visit from July – Oct you may also get the chance to watch the turtles being released into the ocean.