83 wandering dogs on the beach during the nesting season. Moreover, an emerging global warming-related threat has been reported in the nesting area of the RP, with recordings of high nest temperatures inducing a deficit of male hatchlings (Standora and Spotila 1985; Read et al. 2013, 2019a; Hays et al. 2017). This population feminization trend, likely induced by the dark-colored sand and the depleted dune vegetation (Allenbach 1998; Limpus et al. 2005b), could permanently alter this population reproductive success (Sim et al. 2015; Patrício et al. 2021; Fuentes et al. 2024). On the other hand, the GLS area offers a more moderate anthropogenic disturbance context due to its natural remoteness. Furthermore, the presence of light-colored coral sand and thick vegetation cover on the nesting beaches could contribute to milder incubation conditions. However, it has been reported that coral islets of New Caledonia are facing a great threat in the face of sea level rise induced by climate change, which is likely to lower the resilience of such nesting habitats to erosion processes (Garcin et al. 2016). This heterogeneous situation therefore raises a conservation paradox. The identification of a single MU would lead to consider the populations nesting at the RP and the GLS areas as a whole, and therefore to implement a single, geographically undistinguished management strategy. However, the disparities in threat levels between those two areas also justify the setting up of specific management measures to optimize conservation benefits. Consequently, management objectives should first be addressed and considered as a preliminary step to the identification of both the adapted management measures and the coherent geographical implementation framework, from the local site to the global MU scales. Failing to consider those aspects in addition to the MU boundaries could result in management failure and loss of local population segments (Taylor and Dizon 1999). For example, substantial different conservation strategies to deal with tourism-related negative impacts an invasive species are in force on both areas, justified by the important disparity in the number of visitors reported every year and presence of wandering dogs. On the contrary, should the potential resilience to temperature rise be confirmed in the GLS area, the concerning feminization trend described in the RP beach could be addressed on a broader scale of the MU since we have assumed here that a male-mediated gene flow is occurring between the two nesting areas. Further studies are currently ongoing to assess the consequences of climate change at both areas in order to allow adaptation and prioritization of conservation efforts toward these major nesting grounds for the critically endangered loggerhead turtle subpopulation (Bourgogne et al. 2024b).
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