A rare turtle rescued from the Welsh coast is ready to return home — but faces an unlikely obstacle: U.S. politics.
Rhossi, a critically endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, washed up on Anglesey in late 2023. Since then, the team at Anglesey Sea Zoo has nursed her back to health and declared her fit for release back into the wild — specifically, the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, her native habitat.
But plans to return Rhossi to the U.S. have hit an unexpected snag. Recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump have paused all foreign development assistance for at least three months. As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has frozen funding for multiple conservation initiatives, including the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund — the very group that had been working closely with the zoo on Rhossi’s repatriation.
To make matters worse, over 400 USFWS employees were laid off in February as part of efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
“It’s a huge problem — it’s very frustrating,” said Frankie Hobro, director of Anglesey Sea Zoo. “Animal species don’t understand politics, borders, or bureaucracies.”
Kemp’s ridley turtles are the world’s most endangered sea turtle species, with only around 7,000 breeding females left. In 2023, Anglesey Sea Zoo successfully returned another rescued turtle, Tally, to Texas, where it was later released into the wild. The team had hoped to build on that momentum.
“We thought we had a smooth system in place and were ready to fine-tune it for future turtles,” Hobro said. “Now all of that is in limbo.”
Former USFWS director Martha Williams, who led the agency under President Biden, called the situation “heartbreaking.”
“I didn’t expect this administration to be particularly conservation-friendly, but I’ve been shocked at how quickly decades of progress have been unraveled,” she said. “These international programs involve such small amounts of money, but the impact is enormous — for species and communities alike.”
Despite the funding freeze, Williams urged conservationists not to lose hope: “Speak out. Share these stories. Explain why this work matters — because it truly does.”
Back in Wales, the Anglesey team remains determined to get Rhossi home. One alternative may involve coordinating through Mexico, another key player in Kemp’s ridley conservation. But Hobro says it would be unfortunate to lose the strong ties they’ve built with U.S.-based programs in Texas.
“It’s just a question of how long the pause will last, and whether we can still push Rhossi’s return through, or if we’ll have to start over with a different route,” she said.
For now, Rhossi waits — a resilient survivor of the sea, caught in the crosscurrents of international policy.