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Tagging a Hawksbill in Nicaragua
From our friends at Fauna and Flor International and ICAPO: Aquí les dejó un video (7 minutos) que preparamos para documentar la experiencia de marcaje satelital de tortugas carey aquí en Nicaragua en Julio pasado.
October Newsletter Online
Jaguars, coastal clean-ups, and sloth action shots! Check out our October newsletter to learn about jaguars and coastal clean-ups, and to read our biologists' adventures in camera trapping.
Is Climate Change Shrinking Fish?
Sunday's Guardian: Global warming is likely to shrink the size of fish by as much as a quarter in coming decades, according to a groundbreaking new study of the world's oceans. ... "Our work shows a very concerning future for the oceans and so it is very important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop better fish management policies to adapt to these changes," said Cheung. All the more reason...
Underwater with a Hawksbill
Thanks to our friends at ICAPO, SeaTurtle.org, and Flora & Fauna International for sharing these videos with us.
Arribada, Aerial Footage
Great aerial footage of an arribada in Mexico.
International Coastal Cleanup with NICA
Paso Pacífico has been managing Nicaragua's participation in the Ocean Conservancy's annual International Coastal Cleanup for five years. This past weekend, Comunidad Connect, TESÓN, and Barrio Planta helped us round up hundreds of volunteers who picked up over 2000 pounds of trash along the beaches and waterways of several coastal communities. You can read more about it (in Spanish) at El Nuevo Diario. This coming weekend is part two of...
12 Miles of Paradise
Over at the WILDblog, Brad Nahill, recalls "Exploring Nicaragua's Paso del Istmo": Brad Nahill spots a turtle (photo by Sarah Rudeen) We headed out by boat to explore the spectacular stretch of coast, possibly the most beautiful and dramatic of coastline that I’ve ever seen (and I live in Oregon). Crashing waves batter sloping flat rocks and white sand beaches hide behind rocky-forested outcrops. Moving north along the coast of...
Learning Together
Last night we met a great group of Pepperdine students who are partnered with us for a joint financial management course provided by the Ventura County Community Foundation and Pepperdine University. Our team includes Gemma and Reuben from southern California, and Lauren from Texas. All three are minoring in non-profit management and seem bright, well-informed, and eager to help us hone our fundraising strategies and financial planning procedures. We look...
Join Us September 22nd & 29th
Our August Newsletter Is Online
Meet a bat we didn't know existed in Nicaragua, follow a tagged sea turtle, and help us name the next turtle we tag. Conservation in Action On the night of June 27 on Brasilon beach in southwestern Nicaragua, a green sea turtle hauled herself ashore, dragged herself up the beach to the treeline, dug her nest, laid her eggs, and went on a walkabout. As she began winding down, Paso...
‘Batwoman’ Bags New Bat in Nicaragua
In yesterday's Arizona Daily Sun: NAU School of Forestry wildlife ecology professor Carol Chambers, and Nicaraguan bat expert Arnulfo Ramon Medina Fitoria netted, measured, weighed and documented the only Phylloderma stenops bat ever captured and recorded in the Central American country. This particular bat weighs about as much as 20 Hershey's kisses and usually is captured in mist nets above streams in evergreen forests. Learn more about our research on...
Presenting Alexa
We are pleased to introduce Alexa, the Hawksbill turtle to our colleagues and fellow friends of the sea. Alexa is named for Alex Gaos, co-founder of ICAPO, the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative. Alex and Ingrid Yañez have linked many people in Central America in their efforts to discover, understand, and protect the Hawksbill populations of the Eastern Pacific. Alexa arrived on the beach at the La Flor Wildlife Refuge in southern...
Presentando Alexa
Querido Amigos y Compañeros del mar, Quiero presentarles a la tortuga Carey, ALEXA. Ella es bendecida con su nombre en honor a nuestro dinámico y motivador líder Alex Gaos. Gracias a Alex e Ingrid todos somos vinculados como amigos y socios en la urgente causa de descubrir y proteger a la tortuga Carey del Pacífico Oriental. Alexa arribó a una playa del sur pacífico de Nicaragua (ubicado en el RVS...
Recognizing Paso Pacifico’s Rangers
Salvador Sanchez has been selected to travel to Argentina on a full scholarship for the eighth annual Latin American regional ranger training course. We're pleased that Salvador has been selected as the fourth Paso Pacifico ranger to represent Nicaragua in this prestigious program. We're proud of Salvador and all of our rangers, and we're grateful to Rick Smith and the Turner Foundation for their help building our successful ranger programs.
California’s Official Marine Reptile
The California state Senate voted this week to make the endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtle the official marine reptile of California. Assuming Governor Jerry Brown signs the legislation into law, October 15th will officially be Leatherback Conservation Day in the state of California. Mark your calendars! Paso Pacifico's head turtle ranger, Salvador Sanchez, inspects a leatherback turtle on one of the beaches where we work to protect sea turtle nests. Every...
The Tortoise
Our friends at the Turtle Conservancy have launched The Tortoise, their new magazine dedicated to the appreciation and conservation of tortoises and turtles and their habitats worldwide. “Turtles and tortoises have been on our earth for more than 200 million years, before the great dinosaurs roamed the planet, and today they face unprecedented challenges for their survival. No vertebrate Order has a greater percentage of species facing extinction. This publication is...
Bat Calls
A team from Bats Conservation International, Paso Pacifico, and MARENA studies bats at Volcano Masaya National Park. Bats are essential to ecosystem health and their populations are dwindling around the world, so it is important to understand individual bat species, bat populations, and, of course, the reasons for their decline. In Nicaragua, we study bat populations and their insect diets because we're considered not just with ecological health, but also...
Tracking Saralisa
Saralisa, the green sea turtle we tagged in June, is off the coast of El Salvador. She has traveled a long way and is now in the waters where two of the turtles recently tagged by ICAPO have run into trouble. One was blown up by dynamite fishing, the other caught in a fishing net (illustrating the importance of sustainable fisheries). We'll be watching Saralisa very closely over the next...
The Results Are In
In ten days on Playa Colorado for the ISA World Masters Surfing Championship, we hauled out 21000 pounds of garbage and 3000 pounds of recycables. Thanks again to partner organizations RENISA and Proyecto TESÓN who helped us keep the beaches clean.
From El Salvador: Hawksbills in the News
Sadly, today's batch of links includes news of the deaths of two critically endangered Hawksbills, both of whom were tagged by ICAPO earlier this summer. This video from Media Center ElSalvador.com (in Spanish) features interviews with ICAPO staff, as well as mangrove conservationists, and provides a thorough overview of the significance of the lessons learned from these particular turtles, one of whom died as a result of fishing with explosives, the other...
Aloha!
On July 14th the International Surfing Association World Masters Surfing Championship opened on Playa Colorado, Nicaragua, bringing the world's best surfers, surfing fans, and international media to the region where we work. Surfwire described Playa Colorado as "a place where the jungle met the sand and the Howler Monkeys offered early-morning wake-up calls" giving the international visitors "a first-hand opportunity to see and be a part of a surf culture...
Welcome to Playa Colorado!
This is our home all week for the International Surf Association's World Masters Surfing Championship. Here, in part, thanks to the SIMA Environmental Fund, which supports our Surf Ambassadors program for ocean conservation, we're helping with event logistics and making sure the environmental impact is minimal. Working with our RENISA and our Proyecto TESON partners at Comunidad Connect and Cafe Las Flores, we're patrolling the beach all day for litter. Playa Colorado...
The Underwater Enviropreneur
For the winter/spring edition of PERC Reports, Reed Watson talked to scuba diver and reef restoration entrepreneur, Brett Howell. As the Walker Conservation Fellow at the Georgia Aquarium, Howell hopes to illustrate that Florida's coral reefs, a hotbed of biodiversity, present opportunity for cooperation and restoration, rather than a source of conflict. Howell works with the Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF), which grows endangered species of coral in nurseries, to identify...
One Turtle Saved
Fifteen years ago the hawksbill sea turtle in my hands would have been hog-tied, whisked hundreds of miles, slaughtered and carved into trinkets. Now, it swims free. On Baja’s Pacific coast, an adult male hawksbill sea turtle found its way into a fisherman’s net. In the past, for the fisherman anyway, such a thing would have been considered a stroke of good luck. The endless demand for turtle meat, eggs,...
Burt Talks to the Bees
Via the Sustainable Brands newsletter: Burt’s Bees is collaborating with artists and experts at the Pollinator Partnership to generate greater public awareness about the importance of honeybees to agriculture and the threats they face. For such small, short-lived creatures, bees do a lot of heavy lifting to keep life on Earth in balance. In fact, an estimated one-third of the food on Earth depends on pollination by bees. Because they...
Help Fight Fire with Fire
We echo the Nature Conservancy in saying that our hearts go out to those affected by the wildfires burning up the American West. Just as we asked for your help raising money to plant trees in the wake of the fire at the La Flor Wildlife Refuge, the Nature Conservancy is asking for your help restoring forests to reduce the risk of megafires. As the Nature Conservancy's newsletter points out,...
Jaguar & Her Cub Spotted on Colombian Plantation
From NatGeo DailyNews: Jaguars currently live in isolated populations scattered across North and South America, which is part of the reason the species is listed as "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. ... Usually, just one jaguar cub survives in a litter, so seeing two cubs alive and well is "heartwarming," he said. (Take a big cats quiz.) It's "important to note" that the camera traps...
Rio +20
Our friends at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry present a peek inside the Rio +20 Earth Summit, from a unique perspective, that of one of their students: "In 1992 I was one year old, I was learning to be a person, walk, talk, eat etc. I had no idea that there was an Earth summit or even a UN." You can follow the adventure on her blog.
Panthera’s Camera Traps Capture Jaguars On Colombian Oil Plantations
From Red Orbit: The first ever photographs of jaguars within an oil plantation in Colombia have just been released... Panthera, the world’s leading wild cat conservation organization, focuses solely on the study and conservation of wild cats. The camera traps placed by Panthera in the Magdalena River valley were meant to gather information about the dangers of Colombia’s growing oil plantations on the jaguar populations. Panthera’s objective is to understand...
Birds, Bats, and Bugs
Today's 60-Second Science podcast from Scientific American: Birds and Bats Downsized Bugs Insect size tracked with atmospheric oxygen levels, until hungry birds and bats hit the scene. In the day of the dinosaur, insects had wingspans of nearly two-and-a-half feet. So why are today’s bugs so puny? Photo courtesy of Bruce Taubert Wildlife Photography http://www.brucetaubert.com/ Birds and bats! Researchers at U.C. Santa Cruz have published their findings on the evolution of insect size...
Swedish Fish?
As we honor the life and work of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom, let's celebrate the fact that she was right: we can peacefully co-exist with each other and with nature. A great way to understand how is to look at community-managed sustainable fisheries. As reported on NPR's Morning Edition, when New England's fish stocks became severely depleted, a lack of fish put a lot of fishermen out of business. One...
World Oceans Day
Paso Pacífico works from ridge to reef to protect biodiversity and empower communities. What are we doing along coastlines and at sea? Understanding Marine Ecology Our Coastal Marine Research Project contributes to the scientific understanding of sea turtle populations and marine ecology. Our science-based monitoring gauges the effectiveness of management at marine protected areas and the protection of key indicator species – like sea turtles – which are also flagship tourism...
Engaging the Nicaraguan Surfing Community in Coastal Conservation
From our friends at the SIMA Environmental Fund: For Immediate Release SIMA’S 23rd ANNUAL WATERMAN'S WEEKEND TO BENEFIT 20 OCEAN ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS - Waterman’s Weekend Sponsorships Available Now - ALISO VIEJO, CALIF. (May 29, 2012) – The Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA) Environmental Fund announced today the 20 ocean-environmental organizations named as beneficiaries of the 23rd Annual Waterman's Weekend, the surf industry's annual environmental fundraiser to be held August 10-11, 2012. The weekend...
Hot Nests Mean Baked Baby Leatherbacks
Today at the New York Times Green blog: On beaches, poachers snatch up their eggs and babies for stewing; at sea, adults get snagged by fishermen’s long lines and nets. Now, climate change joins the list, threatening the survival of critically endangered leatherback sea turtles in the Pacific. Turtles, the article explains, will have an especially difficult time adapting to climate change for a couple of reasons. First, moving farther north...
The Importance of Science Transfer
As part of their Global Reset series, Seed Magazine explores how a reformation of the culture and practice of science could help the scientific community respond to global challenges: An interdisciplinary approach is necessary for the weighty, interconnected problems—from sustainable development to climate change—that are most in need of science transfer. And bringing scientists and their ideas together is a dependable way of generating new ideas, sometimes of the world-changing...
Conservationists’ Catch-22
The Independent asks what to do when one endangered species starts eating another: That is the problem facing environmentalists whose research shows that jaguars, themselves at risk of extinction, are increasingly preying on endangered turtle species. Experts said that the predation of adult turtles by the big cats in a Costa Rican national park “has now reached a magnitude never before recorded”. “More and more jaguars are being pushed towards...
Native Bees in Central America
Image courtesy of Gus Harper, artist Many people have been highlighting the importance of bees lately. Much of the news has been bad: bees disappearing, crops failing, etc. Fortunately, while climate change, shifts in agriculture, deforestation, and other factors have threatened some bee populations, it is possible for bees to make a comeback. The really good news is we can help. Dating back to the time of the Great Pyramids,...
Lessons Learned from the Yellow-naped Amazon
Yesterday we took part in the Parrot Care Project and Cage xChange event at Omar's Exotic Birds in Santa Monica. Here's what we shared with the people in attendance about our Yellow-Naped Amazon Parrot Conservation Program: As an environmental conservation organization dedicated to habitat restoration and community empowerment in Nicaragua, we've been studying the Yellow-Naped Amazon parrot for four years. We're here today to share with you what the Yellow-Naped...
Internship: Surfing and Ocean Conservation
Photo courtesy of The Barrio Planta Project via Yaosca Jimenez Over the past several years, more and more tourists have been finding their way to the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua for the waves. Recently, local Nicaraguans from fishing communities have also adopted the sport with a passion. In July 2012 Nicaragua will host the ISA World Masters Surfing Championship. With the right knowledge, tools, and organizational support, these young locals...
Earth Day 2012: Help Us Plant One Thousand Trees
The Pacific slope of Nicaragua – home to threatened mangroves, endangered sea turtles, and yellow-naped Amazon parrots – is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. As in many impoverished places, the pervasiveness of rural poverty can generate tension between locals and conservationists. Since 2005, Paso Pacífico has worked to mitigate climate change, restore migratory corridors, and increase prosperity from ridge to reef. Our science-based and community-driven methods...
80,000 Acres Added to Maya Biosphere Reserve
More protected habitat is a "good deal for jaguar, puma, ocelot, margay, tapir, howler monkey, spider monkey, scarlet macaw, ocellated turkey, harpy eagle, and other endangered wildlife" in Guatemala. Read more about the expansion of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Daily Green.
Giving Parrots Elbow Room
Parrots make headlines in today's LA Times: Tweti's nonprofit Parrot Care Project and Cage xChange Campaign will begin this month at a Santa Monica exotic bird shop where free veterinary exams will be available and experts will be on hand to discuss avian nutrition, how to choose the right cage and how to equip it with toys. We'll be at Omar's in Santa Monica on Saturday, April 29th for the...
Madagascar’s Unique Wildlife Populations
NBCNews Science: The mysteriously rich diversity of life on the isle of Madagascar might have arrived there in part on "floating islands" carried by ocean currents, researchers now say. Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, is the sole home to a wide variety of animal species, most of which are thought to have reached Madagascar after plate tectonics separated it from Africa and other continents. ... But not all scientists have...
Help Save Nicaragua’s Last Jaguars
Jaguars are among the most charismatic and important large carnivores in Latin America. However, they have lost much of their range to human activities like logging and ranching, which destroy their habitat and reduce their populations. Additionally, they are subject to hunting and persecution by people trying to protect their cattle and domestic animals. Jaguars once roamed throughout the forests of Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast; however, due to deforestation, the only...
Lessons from Canada: Community Involvement in Coastal Restoration
The climate and ecology of Canada's Maritimes and coastal Nicaragua are very different, but just like in New Brunswick, Nicaragua's "coastal areas support economic, cultural, and recreational activities, as well as a diversity of flora and fauna." For these reasons, and more, the findings in this paper from CAKE (Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange) are relevant to us: Examining Community Adaptive Capacity to Address Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, and Salt...
He Really Bought A Zoo
The Telegraph interviews the man behind the movie: 'There were lots of times when I thought, “What have I done?”’ Mee says now. 'But when the jaguar escaped it was the first time I realised there were lives at stake.’
Ground-truthing the Nicaraguan Jaguar
Panthera's February Newsletter is out, with some exciting news for them. They're reporting the first Panthera camera trap photo of a jaguar taken in Nicaragua. You can see their photo here. Ground-truthing is providing verification of the existence of a species whose populations have not been carefully observed and studied. Camera traps are extremely helpful to conservation science. After decades of decline and without a documented sighting for over 15 years, it...
Iniciativa Carey del Pacífico Oriental (ICAPO)
Until recently, the hawksbill sea turtle was thought to be extinct in the eastern Pacific, but thanks to discoveries made by the Iniciativa Carey del Pacífico Oriental (ICAPO), we know now that, with concentrated conservation efforts, it's not too late to bring the Hawskbill Sea Turtle back from the brink of extinction. This great comic is designed to remind people of just that: Juntos podemos traer de vuelta a la...
Meet Miguel Ordenana!
Miguel Ordeñana, the wildlife biologist leading our jaguar conservation efforts, has begun blogging at Urban Carnivores, where he'll be reporting on big cats in LA's Griffith Park, and in the Paso del Istmo. Be sure to tune in as he discusses wildlife corridors, big cats and their prey, camera traps, and more.
NGO PRETOMA in the New York Times
Our friends at the Costa Rican NGO PRETOMA got a mention in today's NYTimes Green blog piece on illegal fishing. PRETOMA is focused on marine conservation and research. They have been instrumental in helping us with our sustainable fisheries program.