The sea turtle conservation community has made remarkable strides in globalscale priority setting in recent decades thanks to the collective efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), universities, and local communities. Nothing highlights this progress better than the paper, “Updated Global Conservation Status and Priorities for Marine Turtles,” published in the journal Endangered Species Research in early 2025, an effort that was led by the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group (MTSG), the State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT) program, and the thousands of people these networks represent. Known as CPP (short for the Conservation Priorities Portfolio version 2.0), that peer-reviewed paper is the culmination of more than two decades of data compilation and analysis, strategic thinking and planning, countless meetings (live and online), and prolonged and sometimes heated discussions among hundreds of sea turtle conservationists from dozens of countries.
