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 The uninhabited islands of Mataha and Bilangbilangan are situated closely together in the Southern part of the Derawan archipelago. Just as Sangalaki both islands were occupied by turtle egg collectors. They were "authorized" by the local government which sold an annual license to collect turtle eggs to a rich businessman despite the fact that all turtles including their eggs are protected by national law.
Ever since the TURTLE FOUNDATION knew about this license it did all it could to stop the illegal business. In this respect we were successful on Sangalaki Island. After three years only, in 2002 we were able to convince the government that the licence to collect turtle eggs must not be renewed and that the island must be fully protected. Despite or may be because of this success it turned out that it would be much harder to acchieve the same in relation to Mataha and Bilangbilangen and two more turtle nesting islands (Belambangan and Sambit). But giving up was not an option to the TURTLE FOUNDATION and finally in summer 2006 the breakthrough was made: the local government decided not to renew the license to collect turtle eggs on these islands anymore. What a relief!
 The TURTLE FOUNDATION was mandated and authorized to secure and protect the islands in close co-operation with the office for the protection of the environment (KSDA). However, it was far more difficult and challenging to build an infrastructure on these islands in order to accomodate rangers there then on Sangalaki back in 2002. On Sangalaki there was already some existing infrastructure at the time (a small dive resort) and with Sangalaki being much closer to the mainland the logistics were much easier.
Due to the lack of sufficient funds the TURTLE FOUDATION and KSDA decided to proceed step-by-step. We agreed that we would first of all concentrate on two of the four islands only, namely on Mataha and Bilangbilangan. The entire infrastructure including a solid ranger station was built, boats, radios, etc. were bought and finally rangers were brought to the islands. Now, for the first time in many years, baby turtles hatch again on these islands in great numbers every night.
We were thrilled when we realized that according to our first data recording on nestings the number of nests is considerably higher than we were always told and than we expected. In 2008 on average we counted 500 nests per month so far. This corresponds to approximately 600'000 hatchlings per year!
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