The US is a nation of animal lovers. We cherish or dogs, cats, hamsters and yes even reptiles and turtles. Go into any pet store and you’ll find turtles as pets. They’re great for kids and relatively easy to take care of.

Five of the world’s seven sea turtle species are found in the Gulf of Mexico: leatherback, hawksbill, green, loggerhead and Kemp’s ridley. Each of the five sea turtle species of the Gulf is now classified as either threatened or endangered and could become extinct unless steps are taken to protect and enhance its populations.

During the breeding season the female can nest more than once, and when these slow but beautiful creatures comes ashore it places itself in a very vulnerable position. Settlement and recreational development have encroached on nesting areas which can force a female to use a less suitable nesting area or to abort her eggs altogether.

On land they do not possess much grace, and with their poor vision they are at a great disadvantage. This of course offers poachers the opportunity to harm the turtle and steal their eggs. Turtle eggs are a delicacy in many areas, and the turtle’s “calipee” is removed for turtle soup. Calipee is cartilage which is literally cut out of the live turtle from among the bones of the bottom shell.

It’s cruel.

Now it seems BP has allegedly taken animal cruelty to whole different level — burning endangered turtles alive.

Ridleys are sometime known as the “Gulf’s sea turtle” because it is the only species found exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1947, scientists filmed an estimated 40,000 females nesting on a single beach in Mexico. After decades of intense human exploitation (everything from eating the turtle eggs to destroying nesting habitat to drowning in trawl nets) the ridley population had dropped to just 702 nests by 1985. These numbers made a turnaround in recent years, following heroic conservation efforts by Mexico and the U.S. till today’s BP oil disaster that threatens to annihilate them.

But today, these turtles worry about more than poachers. Turtles have to worry about drowning in oil. Further, turtles are being destroyed by the most cruel and inhumane manner possible — BP’s operatives are burning turtles alive.

Three environmental groups on Tuesday filed formal notice of their intention to sue BP, the Coast Guard and a string of federal agencies involved in the cleanup. They contend the practice of corralling and torching oil at sea was being conducted without first adequately checking for turtles and likely claiming hundreds of them, including endangered Kemp’s ridleys.

They said BP’s burn crews target oil clumped with huge mats of floating seaweed called sargassum that attract turtles and a host of other sea life — sometimes in the same weed lines from which they’ve just pulled dozens of turtles.

The LA Times reports:

…The burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle researchers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum before they are burned alive

Much of the wildlife here seems doomed in any case. “We’ve seen the oil covering the turtles so thick they could barely move, could hardly lift their heads,” Research scientist Blair Witherington said. “I won’t pretend to know which is the nastiest.”

Yet in one case, the crew had to fall back and watch as skimmers gathered up a long line of sargassum that hadn’t yet been searched – and which they believe was full of turtles that might have been saved.

“In a perfect world, they’d gather up the material and let us search it before they burned it,” Witherington said. “But that connection hasn’t been made. The lines of communication aren’t there.”

The smoke starts rising on the horizon at midday. The two boats carrying the researchers head in different directions, hoping to find and rescue a few more turtles before their mission wraps up. They find 11, all of them heavily speckled with oil.

Each day, the chances of rescues grow smaller. That there are still so many left stranded in the oil without food is a small miracle. Their long-term chances “are zero,” Witherington said.

On days when the weather is fine and there is relatively no wind, BP conducts up to a dozen “controlled burns”, torching vast expanses of the ocean surface within a corral of fireproof booms.

Biologists say such burns are deadly for young turtles because oil and sargassum – the seaweed mats that provide nutrients to jellyfish and a range of other creatures that congregate in the same locations. The sargassum is also a perfect hunting ground for young sea turtles, who are not developed enough to dive to the ocean floor to forage for food.

Once BP moves in, the turtles are doomed. “They drag a boom between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can’t get out,” Ellis said.

Todd Steiner, Turtle Island Restoration’s executive director, said rescue crews and researchers haven’t been able to document turtle deaths only because they’re not allowed near the fires by BP and the Coast Guard. Steiner’s group is asking BP to allow teams to survey before starting any fires.

Through Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had recovered 436 dead sea turtles from the coastline.

Steiner said there is no way to tell how many turtles might have been burned alive but with the Kemp’s ridley nesting season wrapping up along the Mexico and Texas coasts, thousands of breeding adults are in the Gulf working their way toward feeding grounds in the Atlantic, along with still more juveniles. Tens of thousands of hatchlings also will soon begin pouring into the Gulf from the Kemp’s ridley main nesting grounds in Mexico. Steiner added, “The same currents and winds that steer seaweed, fish and sea turtles through the Gulf also act on the slick, pushing poisonous oil into the same place where sea life gathers.” Rescue crews pulling turtles out had watched crews burn the same drifting weed lines, which can stretch for miles, where they had been finding turtles.

The Turtle Island Restoration Network, Animal Welfare Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act. “It’s the most inhumane thing I have ever heard, to light that oil when there are some things out there trying to escape it,” said Carole Allen, Gulf director of Turtle Island Restoration Network.

JUDGE OVERSEEING THE LAWSUIT DIVESTED ALL OIL RELATED HOLDINGS BEFORE TAKING CASE

The lawsuit is: Animal Welfare Institute v. BP America Inc. et al, 2:10-cv-01866, U.S. District Courts, Eastern District of Louisiana to be heard by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier. Realizing the sensitivity of conflicts, early this month Judge Barbier divested all his oil related holdings to avoid any conflict-of-interests.

“BP’s actions in killing and otherwise harming and harassing endangered and threatened sea turtles constitute flagrant violations of its lease with the United States,” alleges the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

“While cleaning up the catastrophic oil spill is critically important, so too is doing it in a way which doesn’t destroy wildlife in a flagrantly unlawful manner,” said Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute. “We hope that our legal efforts will serve to protect the endangered sea turtles whose very existence hangs in the balance.”

The lawsuit alleges BP is violating the Endangered Species Act, and that the Coast Guard is violating the Clean Water Act by directing the oil containment actions that kill the animals.

“BP could engage in controlled burns without taking endangered or threatened sea turtles – this would require it to spend resources to increase its efforts to ensure that it has removed as many turtles as possible from the relevant areas before burning those animals. However, to date, BP has not taken such actions,” the lawsuit states.

BP spokesman Toby Odone said the company could not comment on any threatened litigation.

On Thursday July 1, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein sent a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is assisting with the cleanup, sharing concerns about sea turtles and other wildlife affected by the cleanup efforts. Senator Feinstein said in the letter, “I understand that keeping the oil from reaching the shoreline is a high priority, but efforts to do so must not unreasonably jeopardize wildlife and the rest of the fragile and highly productive Gulf Coast ecosystem. Some options may be available to minimize the risk to sea turtles and other wildlife from controlled burns and the spill itself, such as employing locals as wildlife spotters on the skimmers or to rescue turtles before they are oiled or burned.”

FISH AND WILDLIFE RELOCATING TURTLE EGGS

In the meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the state of Florida, will include a handful of nests from various turtle species — Kemp’s ridley, leatherback and green turtles. Plans call for relocating 700 to 800 clutches of eggs left newly buried on the sandy beaches of Alabama and northwestern Florida accounting for the bulk of turtle nests in the northern Gulf, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Charles Underwood said Monday.

Underwood continued, “Relocating sea turtle nests on occasion, nest by nest, in very small numbers, has been done before but nothing has even been considered at this massive scale. It’s never been attempted anywhere in the world.”