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EspañolUpdate: Turtle Tracker
"Our" turtle Brasilia has made it to El Salvador. You can monitor her progress here. Our turtle rangers have also encountered a third Hawksbill turtle, which will receive the transmitter which was stolen from Karen.
Partnering with the Private Wildlife Reserve Network
Paso Pacifico and the Red de Reservas Silvestres Privadas have officially joined forces to help to guide our partnership and strengthen Paso Pacifico’s commitment to supporting the Private Reserve Network. We are very fortunate to be partnering with such a valuable organization and its members. Please check out the website for the Red de Reservas Silvestres Privadas when you have a chance. You will be amazed at how the membership...
September 19th: Nicaragua’s 2nd International Coastal Clean-up
September 4th Paso Pacifico will be holding a national press conference with MARENA and its many other partners about the International Coastal Clean-up. We expect it to be a major press event. Stay tuned for more coverage. The clean up is scheduled for September 19th. We have also received a grant to support the clean-up event. A portion of the fund will be used to purchase garbage canisters to be...
Plastics in Oceans Decompose, Release Hazardous Chemicals
Our coastal, harbor, and waterways cleanups are even more important than we thought: WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2009 — In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste floating in the world’s oceans, scientists are reporting that plastics — reputed to be virtually indestructible — decompose with surprising speed and release potentially toxic substances into the water. Reporting here today...
Portable Light Project: Designs to Improve Life
We are thrilled that our partners at the Portable Light Project are INDEX Award finalists. The INDEX Award is one of the most significant awards for designs that improve life. We've just put our new solar FLAP bags from the Portable Light Project to work in the field. Sloan Kuyper from the Portable Light Project teaches turtle rangers about his team's product. Turtle Rangers at La Flor show off their...
Using Fractals to Mitigate Climate Change
NOVA: Hunting the Hidden Dimension Paso Pacifico founder, ecologist Sarah Otterstrom, ponders our carbon sequestration projects. Bill Enquist, a plant ecologist at the University of Arizona, is using fractals to further understanding of forests and how they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help regulating the Earth's climate. Enquist and his team of scientists are working in forest reserves in the Guanacaste Province in Costa Rica, which borders the area where...
Caribbean Biological Corridor in the Works?
"The Plan establishes the profiles for projects to be developed in a 1,600 kilometer-long geographic area which links three countries’ landscapes, ecosystems, habitats and cultures, the local Environment Ministry (Semarena) announced today." Reported in Dominican Today We'll be watching!
Solar FLAP Bags for Turtle Rangers
We're getting excited to welcome our friends from the Portable Light Project to Nicaragua. They're bringing customized solar FLAP units for use on the turtle nesting beaches. These special units, created just for us, will be mounted to these bags (pictured at right). Each unit will emit a red light, rather than a white light, to ensure that they don't disorient turtle hatchlings who follow the moonlight to sea. We're grateful to...
Turtle Transmitter Recovered
Yesterday was a good day. We recovered the stolen turtle transmitter without police intervention. This, of course, is partly due to the fact that the stolen device was still transmitting its location. Fortunately, though, we also had conflict resolution training and experience on our side. Once our staff explained the transmitter's value for conservation and for sea turtles, the device was returned. Everyone is at peace and we have our...
EcoLocalizer Reports on Performance-Based Conservation
Picking up Rick Smith's recent piece at National Parks Traveler, EcoLocalizer has posted about our turtle rangers and community-based conservation programs: Paso Pacífico, a non-profit organization focusing on the Pacific slope of Central America, is helping endangered Hawksbill Turtles in Nicaragua with a compensation-based conservation program based on incentive payments for local people. The financial rewards to locals in exchange for protecting endangered sea turtle nests are making a difference:...
Crazy Turtle Update
Believe it or not, someone has stolen the satellite tracking device right off the back of Karen the Hawksbill sea turtle. Our colleagues in Ostional are trying to recover it -- luckily the stolen device is trackable! Meanwhile, Karen is doing just fine. In fact, she nested last night at one of our beaches. Our rangers protected her and continue to protect her nest.
Ventura County Star Talks Turtles
We got a brief mention in the local paper today! Ventura group tags rare sea turtle for study "The Ventura-based conservation group Paso Pacifico recently tagged a rare sea turtle off the coast of Nicaragua with a radio transmitter that allows scientists to study the endangered species."
Endangered Hawksbill Turtles Tagged
Paso Pacifico is proud to announce that our rangers together with sea turtle scientists from the Proyecto Carey! have measured and tagged two critically endangered Hawksbill turtles. They were encountered and protected by our rangers on June 30th 2009 near the beach ‘La Flor’, a well known mass nesting olive ridley beach along the country’s southwest coast. These turtles will provide critical conservation information for what is one of the...
Exporting “Rangering” to Nicaragua
Paso Pacifíco board member, Rick Smith, has written a new piece for National Parks Traveler about the Hawksbills we're tracking: The rangers who discovered the two turtles kept them on the beach for two days, keeping their heads covered with wet towels and occasionally pouring water over their backs, so these unwitting reptilian volunteers could help scientists learn more about their dwindling species. During the second day, a turtle expert from...
Dreaming of Wetland Reserves
Wetland for sale in southern Nicaragua for sale. We hope to buy it to set aside as a community-managed wildlife reserve area for the local people. If you are interested in contributing to a capital campaign to allow us to require land for biodiversity conservation, please visit our donation page or send an email: wendy(at)pasopacifico.org.
La Conga Reserve
Last week, we visited the new La Conga Reserve in southern Nicaragua with landowner and cattle rancher Pedro Agurcia. Pictured are Agurcia, his daughter, one of his farmworkers, and Paso Pacifico board member Dr. Rodolfo Dirzo. In the background, you can catch a glimpse of the acreage he set aside for biodiversity conservation.
Kayak Guides
Kayak Guides in Ostional As the tourism sector grows in Nicaragua, nature tourism has the potential to provide economic benefit to local communities while also supporting conservation efforts. Paso Pacífico has joined with diverse partners to provide guide training and support business development. Beneficiary groups have included hostels and restaurants, all owned by members of the rural community. Young adults from rural villages have received extensive nature and kayak guide training,...
High-tech Turtles in the News
Karen heads out to sea Karen and Brasilia, the two Hawksbill turtles we tagged earlier this month, are getting good press, in part because Hawksbills are more commonly found in the Caribbean than in the Pacific. In fact, Karen is the first Hawksbill ever to be tagged on Nicaragua's Pacific coast. El Nuevo Diario: Dos tortugas marinas de la especie Carey, especie muy común en el Caribe, asombraron a un...
Track Our Turtles!
Our turtle rangers in Nicaragua affixed satellite transmitters to two Hawksbill turtles, Karen and Brasilia. You can follow their movement here: http://www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?project_id=295&dyn=1246546646
First Pacific Hawksbills Tagged in Nicaragua
Schoolchildren from Ostional named this Hawksbill Brasilia A huge advancement for Hawksbill research in the eastern Pacific, Karen and Brasilia, are the first Hawksbills ever tagged on Nicaragua's Pacific coast. They will provide great tracking information in this extremely data deficient region. Stay tuned for information about how to track the turtles!
Tracking Turtles
We have a hawksbill turtle at the beach where the rangers are and in the next 24 hours will be affixing a satellite transmitter to it to follow its movement across the eastern Pacific. More soon!
A Global Review of Incentive Payments for Sea Turtle Conservation
Published earlier this year, two economists published a paper in the BioOne Online Journal: The use of performance payments to achieve conservation outcomes is increasingly being used as an alternative to traditional regulatory and development-based approaches in low-income nations. Although payments are increasingly common in terrestrial species and ecosystem conservation initiatives, they are rare in marine conservation efforts such as sea turtle protection. This paper describes sea turtle incentive payment...
Setting the World on Fire
Drawing from "Fire in the Earth System," a literature review published in the April 24 Science, Solmaz Barazesh explains fire ecology in his article in this week's Science News, "Ecology, climate and human activities conspire to set the world on fire," July 4th, 2009; Vol.176 #1 (p. 26). Fire can shape landscapes, shift climate and even change processes such as the carbon cycle--blazes have impacted the planet for eons. But...
Salvador Sánchez, natural leader…for nature
From humble origins, Salvador Sánchez, was elected as a community leader in the small fishing village of Ostional, near San Juan del Sur, became a conservationist, and is now a respected leader and successful entrepreneur. This is his story.(Adapted from the Spanish piece written by Adelayde Rivas Sotelo) Natural Leader Ostional is a small fishing community 24 kilometers south of the San Juan del Sur Harbor, in Rivas, Nicaragua's southwestern-most...
Salvador Sánchez, líder por naturaleza
De origen humilde y trabajador, Salvador Sánchez, líder comunitario del pueblo pesquero de Ostional, en el municipio de San Juan del Sur, adaptó la filosofía de la conservación de los recursos naturales, hoy día no sólo es un respetado dirigente, también es un pequeño empresario de éxito. Esta es su historia.Por: Adelayde Rivas Sotelo LíDER POR NATURALEZA Ostional es un pueblo pesquero ubicado a 24 kilómetros al sur de la...
Our Project is Now on the Map
Zoom in on Nicaragua for an overview of our turtle project at seaturtle.org, an online directory of organizations involved in sea turtle research and conservation around the world.
ARBOLES para GAIA – Estrago Ecologico
Our neighbors, the Ojai-based RageJax Foundation has provided support for the ARBOLES para GAIA - Estrago Ecologico art exhibit opening in Managua next Friday. Paso Pacifico is providing several thousand trees to be given out at the exhibit, and each of the artists have created designs that will be on the bags in which the seedlings are placed. To check out the artists and their work, visit the exhibit's blog...
Photos from the Field: Biological Monitoring
Sea Turtles Get It On, and On, and On . . . at Deep Sea News
There should be a sign posted along beaches of the world during a certain season: “WARNING: Enter water at your own risk”. I’m not speaking of extreme undertow or heavy shore-break. Not water quality, or red tide concerns. Nor warnings against poisonous jellyfish. These are all important water safety concerns, but I am referring to something else, something almost as dangerous. I am talking about the distinctly unique experience of...
Effective Management of Protected Areas
We recently hosted a mobile workshop organized by CATIE (the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) and Conservation International to train people in the planning and management of protected areas. The group spent two weeks visiting protected areas in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and learning how to best tackle the challenges of planning and managing protected areas in a changing world. Paso Pacifico Country Director Liza Gonzalez showed our...
Save the Frogs Day
In honor of Save the Frogs Day, we'd like to introduce some of the frogs who live in Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua. The poison dart frog (Dendrobates pumilio) is a resident of the eastern edge of the Paso del Istmo biological corridor where we are restoring habitat from cattle pasture to humid tropical forest. It is listed as near threatened by the IUCN. The red-eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas), which...
Earth Day in San Juan del Sur
Local artists, businesses, municipal government, and students celebrated Earth Day with us this week. During the ceremony the mayor of San Juan del Sur committed the municipality to planting 50,000 trees as a contribution to the Meso-American Biological Corridor.
Impulsan proyectos de reforestación en Rivas
La Prensa reports on our reforestation program in Paso del Istmo (in Spanish). Paso Pacifico's national director is quoted: Esto se ha hecho en sólo tres años, son 450 hectáreas las que ya están reforestadas y la meta es reforestar cinco mil hectáreas en toda la zona y lo más importante es que se están plantando árboles que son nativos de estas tierras. In just three years, Liza explains, we've...
Why Environmentalism Needs High Finance
Over at SeedMagazine.com, there's a great discussion of the need to align economic incentives and biological imperatives. Problems could be averted if species had a value that was neither zero nor infinity, and if there were incentives for people to engage in environmental stewardship before a species becomes endangered. ... We can also use market mechanisms to transfer the actual value of environmental assets to stakeholders in a local community....
El Ostional apuesta al turismo
La Prensa has published a piece on our sea kayak training program (in Spanish), designed to promote eco-tourism in San Juan del Sur and Ostional. The goal of this program is to train young people to become eco-tourism guides, taking advantage of their region's natural beauty (and the kayaks we've furnished with the help of USAID) to launch their own micro-businesses and educate people about the mangroves and coastal ecosystems...
Harbor Clean Up Benefits All
We're pleased to see that a small tourism business is offering a special package for our harbor clean up! For $20, guests will be provided transportation between Managua and San Juan del Sur, where they'll be served lunch and be able to participate in the clean up activities. This is just the indicator of success we love to see! A for-profit business is recognizing the value of our conservation work,...
Jornada de Limpieza Submarina
We're getting ready for our first-ever harbor clean up in San Juan del Sur. Along with the usual coastline clean-up crews, we'll be working with teams of boaters and divers to pull up, haul away, and inventory inorganic waste on the bottom of the bay (presumably mostly abandoned nets and traps). Wokring with the Municipality of San Juan del Sur, the Reef Foundation, and San Juan del Sur CANTUR, we'll...
Environmental Education in Rural Nicaragua
Julie Martinez, our environmental education instructor, has been working with elementary school kids in the Rivas province of Nicaragua. The kids are learning about the ecology of tropical dry forests, and starting to address environmental problems in their own community.
Yo No Como Huevos
We are pleased to partner with Flora and Fauna International on a public awareness campaign to discourage the consumption of sea turtle eggs. We are surveying restaurants and market vendors, and asking them to commit to stop selling turtle eggs. We also visit schools to promote sea turtle protection.
Protecting Sea Turtles to Promote Eco-tourism
We've officially launched our sea turtle program in the Rivas province, and La Prensa picked it up to share the story with the rest of Nicaragua. The campaign, designed to protect critically endangered sea turtles who nest on the beaches of Nicaragua, include environmental education, water conservation, eco-tourism, and local development. It also includes a sea turtle incentive payment program described by country director Liza González: Es un programa de...
A Small Place on Planet Earth
Over at the Cantur San Juan del Sur blog, they're helping us gear up for Earth Day, by advertising our first ever Earth Day Forum. We'll be in San Juan del Sur, "a small place on this wonderful planet Earth, endowed with exceptional and endless beauty" April 22nd and 23rd, making it Nicaragua's Earth Day headquarters. The goal of the event is to celebrate the natural beauty of the region...
Saving Yellow-naped Amazon Parrots in Nicaragua
Our parrot video is now available in English!
Lora Nuca Amarilla
Please watch our video addressing the issue of poaching parrots in Nicaragua. Once abundant in tropical forests, the Yellow-naped parrot (Lora Nuca Amarillo in Spanish) is increasingly rare in Nicaragua, where habitat destruction and poaching have reduced its numbers rapidly. Poachers are often young rural farmers who climb over 15 meters into trees or chop down trees to take parrot chicks out of their nests. Yellow-naped parrots only have one...
¡Gracias, Ostional!
We're so pleased with the level of involvement at our community meeting in Ostional, where we have launched an initiative which includes environmental education, a sea turtle incentive payment program, and kayak guides to take eco-tourists through the mangroves.
Community Tourism at the Feria
The Ostional community guides spent the weekend at Las Galerias Mall in Managua to share their story and to promote Ostional as a tourism destination. Guided tours range from bird-watching hikes, to sea-kayaking trips. All guides (first four young women on the left) are young members of the local community. They are proud to know that they will benefit from ecological tourism.
Coral Reefs: Cradles of Evolution
January's Science roundup included interesting work on coral reefs: Compiling geological and biological data from fossils, a team of evolutionary scientists has found indications of the following: reefs are important evolutionary cradles independent of their preferred habitat in shallow, tropical environments in nonreefal ecosystems, shallow-water environments represent the most important evolutionary cradles Understanding reefs will help us understand populations of sea turtles and other marine wildlife as reefs face the...
Cleaning Up the Coast of Nicaragua
Well, our first ever International Coastal Clean-up event in Nicaragua turned out to be a big success! We had over 1000 people picking up garbage at over 25 beaches across Nicaragua. This is the happy face of a job well done!
Habitat-Friendly Farming and Landscaping
At Paso Pacifico, in addition to working with donors, government entities, and other NGOs, we also work with private landowners to foster cooperation and habitat-friendly farming and planting and land-use practices. Especially when working with home and hotel developers, we strongly encourage the use of native flora. We believe a healthy native plant population is one of the keys to saving many birds and other species from extinction. We understand...
Finding “Gold” in Latin America
We're thrilled to be featured at the Ecosystems Marketplace in a story about a project auditor with the Rainforest Alliance. Jeff Hayward: Quantifying Carbon, Communities, and More Last January, Hayward spent a week visiting a new project in southwestern Nicaragua. Here, large landowners graze cattle on their acreages while farmers hold on to smaller plots of land. At the same time, tourism is booming, with beachfront hotels luring both the...
Blogging Conservation
Well, it has been many months since I established this blog and not a single post. Doing Conservation is very time consuming, and a blog for our organization always seems to go to the bottom of the priority list. One day we will have an amazing volunteer or intern to maintain our blog, or I will become more effective at time management and dedicate some time each week to blogging,...