Paso Pacifico – Page 8

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,...

Author: Paso Pacifico