Wildlife Conservation Insights | Paso Pacifico Blog

Protecting Nicaragua’s Coastline

The pioneers of the surfing industry have also been pioneers in ocean mapping, climate tracking, and ocean conservation. Naturally, surfers were the first group of tourists to venture into Nicaragua, putting its beautiful, undeveloped beaches on the map for ocean lovers worldwide. In the past 20 years, tourism in Nicaragua has increased nearly tenfold, bringing much needed economic development. In the same period, Central America's most impoverished nation – home...

Underwater Robots to Monitor Climate Change

Over at TreeHugger:Underwater robots, otherwise known as autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, have been exploring the ocean floor for years, documenting species and habitats and monitoring changes to the seabed, but there are spots in the ocean that are too hazardous even for robots. Deep ravines, steeply dropping canyons and other major obstacles have so far been too much for AUVs to navigate, but thanks to a new software system,...

Parrots Get a Second Chance

We're featured in the November/December issue of the Humane Society's All Animals magazine: Down the Pacific coast almost to the Costa Rica border, a non- profit called Paso Pacifico, using money from the Loro Parque Foundation and Parrots International, pays landowners to protect parrot nests from poachers, who are usually unemployed trespassers well-known in local communities for breaking the law. Lezama, the ornithologist, has recruited two former poachers to locate...

Can Galapagos Corals Predict the Future of Reefs Worldwide?

"This summer, a major coral survey found that some of the islands’ coral communities are showing promising signs of recovery," the Environment News Service reported last week. The article provides a pretty good overview of how climate change, ocean acidification, and warmer currents affect coral reefs.

Ocean Acidification Threatens Sea Snails

Sea snails' shells are being eaten by increasingly acidic ocean waters, the first evidence that the changing chemistry of the oceans threatens marine habitat. Read more on CNN: The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is increasing, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, according to the World Meteorological Organization. That means that the planet's oceans, natural carbon storage facilities, are absorbing more and more...

Central America’s Hidden Turtles

In the newest issue of WildHope Magazine, SEEtheWILD Director Brad Nahill writes about his adventures with sea turtle researchers from the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative (ICAPO) and Fauna & Flora International. Our friends, operating in El Salvador and Nicaragua, are working to protect perhaps the world’s most endangered population of sea turtles. Read the article here: http://bit.ly/ForgottenTurtleshttp://bit.ly/ForgottenTurtles On page 10, you'll find an update on our jaguar project.

The Dark: Nature’s Nighttime World – TV Review

This synopsis of the new nature show The Dark makes us wish our cable package included BBC2: Advanced thermal imaging cameras and motion sensitive cameras enabled the team to unearth the secrets of nocturnal animals in south and central America. And researchers spent long hours making sure they were in the right place at the right time. It made for thrilling viewing. Jaguars were shown moving stealthily, hunting nesting turtles by the...

Nicaragua: Land of 100 Bat Species

Carol L. Chambers, Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Northern Arizona University, has an article about the bat survey she did with us in the new Bats magazine. The Paso del Istmo is a narrow strip of low mountains sand-wiched between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean. This isthmus is only 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide, but it is a critical passageway for wildlife migrating between North and South America or...

Messaging Ecosystem Services

From the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation blog: People HATE the terms "ecosystem services" and "natural capital"; the very concept that nature "serves" us is unappealing; abstract cases for markets are off-putting, and; while Americans across the political spectrum are deeply and strongly committed to valuing nature, dollars are the least preferred way of doing so. "The language surrounding ecosystem services is a jargon-rich, dense amalgam of scientific, financial, regulatory...

International Barcode of Life

Via the ArtScience Nexus: An interactive art show at the San Diego Natural History Museum interpreting the work of biodiversity scientists who use DNA barcoding to identify species.

Paso Pacífico Blog