According to Buddhist tradition, there is a blind turtle lying at the bottom of a vast ocean. On the surface of the ocean floats a golden ring. Once every hundred years the blind turtle rises to the surface of the ocean with the intention of piercing the ring. Unsurprisingly, his success rate is low. So too, it would appear, are the survival chances of the infant turtles that hatch on Kenya's famous Mombasa Beach. Here only one in a hundred baby turtles have any hope of making it to juvenility and only one in a thousand of battling through to maturity.

Why such a wickedly wasteful survival rate?

As usual, the answer involves mankind, because by polluting the turtles' habitat, devastating their nesting sites, snaring them in shrimp nets, poisoning them with plastic bags, or wolfing down their eggs in the vain pursuit of virility, he has managed to double the survival odds already stacked against the turtle by nature. Quite a feat. Worse still, the evolutionary erase and re-wind is unlikely to be checked because the turtle matures so slowly, taking 30-50 years to achieve breeding status. Its migratory patterns are so little understood, that by the time the world wakes up to the fact that there aren't many turtles left, the spectre of extinction will be close at hand. However, hope comes in the form of an elegantly constructed eco-cocktail offering education and incentive to those who raid the nests, support to those who campaign against man-made marine hazards and a back-up network for those who monitor the nesting sites, tag the hatchlings and plot the progress of the growing turtles through the oceans of the world. The Serena Mombasa Beach Hotel is an active member of this network, having founded its own Turtle Protection Project over a decade ago. It's aim is to protect the nests deposited by the droves of Green, Hawksbill and Olive Ridley turtles that show up three times a year to lay between 100 and 250 eggs each on their traditional nesting site, which, coincidentally, is also the hotel's valuable beachfront.

The first stage of the project involved the erection of a series of unobtrusive turtle hatcheries along the beach. Next, 'spotter teams' of staff, locals and guests were encouraged to patrol the area in search of nests. These are recognisable by the tell-tale rounded sand humps that remain after the mother turtle has scooped out a body pit, excavated an egg-chambe and laid her eggs.

The nests, once located, are either moved to the hatcheries or guarded until the eggs are ready to hatch. The Hotel has also created an effective incentive scheme. For every turtle hatchling that makes it into the waves there is a cash reward for its nest-protector. Finally, the determinedly seaward-headed hatchlings are held back in the hatcheries for an orchestrated predator-free release into the ocean. This takes place under the auspices of David Olendo, resident naturalist at the Serena Beach Hotel, who arrives with a group of guests to lift the door of the hatchery and bid 'bon voyage' to the hundreds of hatchlings as they hurtle helter-skelter down to the sand.

As with most things, the scheme isn't fool proof and confused baby turtles are still to be found paddling doggedly around the swimming pool or floundering in the lily pond having mistaken the hotel lights for the gleam of the horizon. That said, some three thousand hatchlings were escorted down to the water in 2002. The project is also working alongside the Kenya Wildlife Service and a number of internationally financed research agencies to lobby for a form of legislation that makes the fitting of turtle escape hatches to the gill-nets of the shrimp fishers obligatory. They also hope to enforce the five-mile no-fish zone along the coast, which will minimise the pumping of effluent into the seas and guard against the destruction of the traditional sea turtle nesting sites.

The scheme has also produced an unexpected tourism spin-off in so much as many of the hotel guests are so enthused by their turtle-encounter that they not only urge their friends to visit the Serena Hotel for a similar eco-experience, but also plan their own return trips to coincide with the prime hatching periods. All of this acts as a fitting illustration of yet another Buddhist maxim, that of the law of 'Karma'. This law, as ancient as the turtles themselves, states simply that that just as all good deeds will eventually be rewarded, so all negative acts will inexorably rebound on their perpetrators. This gives mankind about thirty years, at the present rate of destruction.