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Raptor Counting

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By Jason G. Goldman

Every year, millions of birds of prey migrate from summertime breeding grounds in North America to overwintering grounds in South America. One section of their pathway stretches nearly 2500 miles between central Texas and northwestern Colombia’s Chocó rainforests and is known as the Mesoamerican Land Corridor. More than five million raptors – the family of birds that includes vultures, hawks, eagles, and owls – can be seen making the journey each year. It’s the most important flyway for raptors in the Americas.

More than one million of them pass through a narrow stretch of southern Nicaragua, bounded on the west by Lago Cocibolca and on the east by Reserva Biológica Indio Maíz. That’s according to a survey conducted in 2019 on behalf of Paso Pacífico in San Miguelito. Over just twenty-three days of monitoring, biologists counted more than 1.2 million raptors passing overhead. Just over eight hundred thousand of them were turkey vultures. Also abundant were Swainson’s hawks and broad-winged hawks. In all, they documented sixteen different types of raptors.

Swainson’s hawk, cropped, by Tucker Hammerstrom on Flickr. Used under CC BY-ND 2.0

The importance of this region for raptors has been known since at least the year 1555, when a Spanish colonialist named Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés wrote about the seasonal movements of large flocks of raptors through eastern Panama. Nearly five hundred years later, there’s still a lot left for avian biologists to learn – especially about the section of the flyway that passes through Nicaragua.

With strict coronavirus protocols in place, the Paso Pacífico team returned to San Miguelito this year to repeat the raptor count. The effort has been extended from one to two months. Halfway through the study, the team reported early results: they again counted more than 1.2 million raptors in the first month of monitoring. As before, the most common species were turkey vultures, Swainson’s hawks, and broad-winged hawks.

Part of the 2020 raptor team, photo by Oswaldo Saballos.

“Everybody knew that the raptors were passing through Nicaragua,” says Sarah Otterstrom, executive director of Paso Pacífico. “It’s not like they’re disappearing between where they’re counted in Belize and where they’re counted again in Costa Rica and Panama,” she explains. But nobody had ever bothered to identify exactly how they are using Nicaraguan airspace, or what habitats they rely on as stopover sites.

That’s why Paso Pacífico intends to construct a permanent raptor monitoring station in the area. After completion, it will join a network of more than a dozen similar sites along the Mesoamerican Land Corridor that, together, will paint a complete picture of raptor movements in the Americas.

The station will be named in honor of Luis Fernando Díaz Chávez, a Paso Pacífico bird technician who pioneered the first year of the raptor monitoring study at San Miguelito. He died in June after spending nearly a month in and out of the hospital with COVID-19.

Luis Díaz Chávez during the 2019 raptor monitoring, photo by Marlon Sotelo.

Just thirty-one years old, Luis had been a regular contractor on Paso Pacífico’s bird projects for the last nine years. “He really loved raptors,” says Otterstrom. “He had written a draft of a Raptors of Nicaragua book, with his own photography, that we are trying to finish and publish for him.”

Luis came from a big family in Managua, where he shared a home with his parents, his grandparents, his brother, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Though his family did not have many financial resources, they helped him become first in his family to graduate college.

After his father died several years ago, Luis became a high school science teacher. The career move meant a more predictable salary than jumping from project to project as a bird technician for Paso Pacífico. “Luis would send most of his payments to his mother,” explains his colleague Oswaldo Saballos, who counted Luis as a friend and as a mentor. Anything left over would be spent on birding guides or other tools to fuel his passion.

Despite his full-time employment as a teacher, Luis still found time to lend his ornithological talents to Paso Pacífico when he could. Over the years, he taught more than five hundred children to observe birds. “He was one of the best birders in the country,” recalls Otterstrom, especially when it came to identifying birds based only on their songs and calls. “I think that his gentle, shy, quiet personality gave him this really supernatural ability to observe and perceive nature,” she says.

After the raptor monitoring station in Luis’s honor is completed, Otterstrom hopes it will attract birdwatchers and other tourists passionate about wildlife and nature. Local communities could therefore leverage the ecological value of the region for economic gain. “This area is where the Nicaraguan government wanted to run the canal. While that project is no longer a threat, it’s important for conservationists to put this space on the map in terms of its ecological value and importance,” she says. “We need to make sure we protect these migratory corridors for raptors and other wildlife.”

Panorama of the 2019 initial monitoring station located in Rivas, Nicaragua, photo by Vincent Romera.

Top photo: Turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) spotted during the 2019 raptor monitoring, photo by Vincent Romera

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By placing 3D-printed and GPS-enabled decoy sea turtle eggs into nests on the beach, it’s possible to gather key evidence needed to expose rampant illegal trade of the eggs, suggests a study publishing in the journal Current Biology on October 5. The researchers specifically tested how well the decoy eggs work and their safety for the endangered turtles.

“Our research showed that placing a decoy into a turtle nest did not damage the incubating embryos and that the decoys work,” says lead author Helen Pheasey (@HelenPheasey) of the University of Kent. “We showed that it was possible to track illegally removed eggs from beach to end consumer as shown by our longest track, which identified the entire trade chain covering 137 kilometers.”

The egg decoys, dubbed InvestEggator, were developed by the conservation organization Paso Pacífico to address the illegal trade of endangered sea turtles in Central America, where the eggs are smuggled from beaches and sold to restaurants and bars as a delicacy. Paso Pacífico-affiliated scientist Kim Williams-Guillén conceived and designed the decoys in response to a call for proposals from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge. They were looking for projects using technological advances to fight wildlife poaching.

“The idea was kind of an ‘Aha’ moment,” Williams-Guillén says.

It immediately brought to mind two of her favorite TV shows, Breaking Bad and The Wire, which both happened to deal with illegal drug trafficking. “In Breaking Bad, the DEA places a GPS tracking device on a tank of chemicals to see who receives the chemicals,” she said. “In one episode of the Wire, two police officers plant an audio device in a tennis ball to surreptitiously record a suspected drug dealer. Turtle eggs basically look like ping pong balls, and we wanted to know where they were going—put those two ideas together and you have the InvestEGGator.”

To see how well they’d work in practice, Pheasey and her colleagues put the 3D-printed decoys in 101 turtle nests on four beaches in Costa Rica. A quarter of the fake eggs were taken illegally from the nests, allowing the researchers to track eggs from five clutches, including two green turtle nests and three olive ridley nests.

One of the decoys made it close to a residential property before going silent. Another went two kilometers to a bar. The one that went farthest ended up 137 kilometers inland, spending two days in transit from the beach to a supermarket loading-bay and then on to a residential property. The researchers assume the egg wasn’t sold at the market but was rather handed off there, from a trafficker to a salesperson.

They also got some anecdotal reports of cases where someone discovered the decoy. “One decoy went off-line in a residential area near Cariari, a town 43 km from the deployment beach,” they wrote. “After 11 days, we received photographs, sent from Cariari, of the dissected egg.”

Along with the photos, they got information about where the egg was purchased and how many eggs had been exchanged. The findings show that the decoy eggs already are yielding intelligence from the local community in addition to tracking data, they note.

Pheasey says that the early evidence shows that the majority of stolen eggs don’t leave the local area. The finding reaffirmed their suspicions, as well as some local reports that most of the trade takes place close to the nesting beach. “Knowing that a high proportion of eggs remain in the local area helps us target our conservation efforts,” Pheasey says. “We can now focus our efforts on raising awareness in the local communities and direct law enforcement to this local issue. It also means we know where the consumers are, which assists us in focusing demand reduction campaigns.”

Pheasey says that the key thing isn’t to find the people who take the eggs from the beach. To a large extent, that’s already known. From a law enforcement perspective, the critical thing is to identify those who are trafficking and selling the eggs, often door to door. “As trafficking is a more serious crime, those handover points are far more valuable from a law enforcement perspective than catching someone taking a nest,” Pheasey says.

That’s what makes the InvestEGGator such an important tool, according to Williams-Guillen. “But,” she adds, “it really must be used in the context of a multi-pronged conservation approach that uses education, building better economic opportunities, and enforcement to help fight sea turtle egg poaching.”

The researchers say they’d like to see more sea turtle projects use the decoys on their nesting beaches. Such efforts could shed light on differences in the turtle egg trade in different countries. In addition to continuing to improve the technology and its deployment, they’re also interested in expanding the technology to other species—for example, Paso Pacifico plans to work with Costa Rican scientists to adapt the transmitter for use in tracking shipments of shark fins. They are also considering its use in tracking the theft of eggs from parrot nests.

 

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This work was supported by USAID Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge and supporters of Turtle Tracks.
Current Biology, Pheasey et al.: “Using GPS enabled decoy turtle eggs to track illegal trade” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31255-0 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.065

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Author Contacts:

Helen Pheasey
University of Kent
helenpheasey@gmail.com

Media Contacts:

Carly Britton
Press Office
Cell Press
+1 (617) 417-7053 | press@cell.com

Olivia Miller
University of Kent
o.miller@kent.ac.uk

Sarah Otterstrom
Executive Director
Paso Pacifico
sarah@pasopacifico.org

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Earth Day turns 50 this year. In its honor, we invite you to make a gift supporting education for 93 children in Nicaragua. From April 20-24, your gifts under $500 will be matched at 50% by Global Giving!

Our Junior Ranger program helps children ages 8-13 learn how to save nature this year in the rural areas where they live. Nicaragua’s amazing biodiversity and landscapes have been significantly damaged, and these children are the key to positive change. Since 2012, our Junior Ranger program has instilled the passion and knowledge they need to safeguard conservation gains and strengthen their communities for life. We invite you to make it happen for 93 more kids this year! Note: This program is continuing at a distance using best practices under COVID-19.

The Problem: Climate change is already impacting lives and livelihoods, especially in the tropics. Nicaragua’s climate problems are exacerbated by widespread exploitation of ecosystems, land and wildlife. To restore its natural resilience, forests and local biodiversity need protection and care. Nearly one-third of Nicaragua’s population is under the age of 15. This rising generation is the key to positive change. Inspire them today!

The Solution: Our Junior Ranger program engages children ages 8-13 in active learning in the forests and beaches near where they live. It also provides them opportunities to give back to their communities through tree planting campaigns, beach cleanups, and sea turtle releases. Your help is needed to support 93 new students this year, many of whom have seen older siblings become Junior Rangers and are incredibly excited to begin learning.

The Long-term Impact: As Junior Rangers mature, their efforts will make major inroads for a sustainable economy and resilient landscape in their region. We have documented positive impacts like decreased consumption of sea turtle eggs, a major decrease in recreational slingshot hunting, and increased interest in jobs in science and sustainable ecotourism. Children who go through this program become significantly stronger stewards of nature and share what they learn with their friends and family. Support them today!

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Saving the planet requires millions of parts to be successful. You are needed. As a supporter of Paso Pacífico, you are already playing a part — but do you know how to multiply your efforts? Discover your power using the steps below!

1. Share

Share our social media posts and e-newsletters, as well as the experiences you’ve had—why you have saved nature through Paso Pacífico. Have you lived in Central America and fallen in love with the dry tropical forest? Been inspired by the passion of someone who has? Does rural environmental education or sustainable oyster production fire your imagination? Tell those whom you meet about the things you love.

Plan Icon 2. Plan

Whether it’s a birthday celebration or a sea-turtle-themed marathon, you can create your very own campaign page to help spread awareness and garner support for a specific goal. To do this, follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to pasopacifico.org/get-involved/take-action.
  2. Click on the category that interests you most. If you’re having trouble deciding which project to focus on, simply visit this link.
  3. Fill out the form to set up your profile. You will be asked for a numerical goal and a note about why you’re passionate about our cause. Then, you’ll be ready!

Invite Icon 3. Invite.

Invite anyone in your circles of friends, family, and acquaintances who you think might be interested in learning more about your goal.

Thank You Icon 4. Thank!

Follow up and be sure to thank every person who has helped you reach your goal. You can thank them publicly or privately; just be sure to let them know how grateful you are.

And thank you to those of you at home reading this — and considering taking these steps to help save our planet!

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Turquoise-browed Motmot (Eumomota superciliosa)

Turquoise-browed Motmot (Eumomota superciliosa)

Since the beginning of time, migratory birds have fascinated and inspired humans. They represented the renewal of life in ancient Greece, and in the Bible, they are symbols of peace and hope. To Native Americans, migratory birds symbolize concepts of unity, freedom, safe return, love, and the celebration of life. Today in almost all cultures, the flight of birds is connected to the ideas of lightness, freedom, harmony, and the arrival of spring.

Not only have these migratory birds represented a variety of symbols, but they have also been seen as holding monetary value. Fortunately, these birds have been protected from over-exploitation by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, enacted in 1916, a United States federal law, making the acts of possessing, transporting, selling, purchasing, importing, and exporting any migratory bird (or its components) illegal for any person who does not possess a valid permit in accordance with federal regulations. This act was created for the purpose of protecting and sustaining the populations of the numerous endemic migratory bird species. Unfortunately, while positive in theory, this act does not address the major causes of these birds’ decline today, which include industrialization, urban development, commercial agriculture, air pollution, fires, and other issues affecting habitat.

Neotropical bird migrants head to the United States during summer and travel back to Central and Southern America for several months during winter. The lush riparian zones of the Great Basin provide insulated, protected habitats, essential for avian breeding and rearing, while native trees and insects of the Central and South American forests support the birds through the winter months. Where a bird meets its need for food, shelter, and reproduction, known as its ecological niche, is vital for survival. The major factors that have contributed to the decline of migrant bird species are present in both North America and Central and South America. In the United States, birds face problems with the degradation and loss of native riparian habitats from urban and commercial development, water diversion and invasive species. Not only do these species deal with hardships during the summer season, but when returning south, they are faced with even more habitat destruction, stemming from unsustainable agricultural practices.

The social aspect of how humans have viewed birds coincides with the significance of their role in the functioning of an ecosystem. Migrants fly over long distances, crossing many international borders, political areas all with their own different legislation on environmental issues and conservation actions. Because of this, cooperation between governments, non-governmental organizations, and other collaborators is essential to coordinate well-established conservation efforts. We need national and international coordinance to overcome the threats to migratory birds.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus Americanus)

Paso Pacífico recognizes migrant bird habitat destruction as a highly significant issue and has made a commitment of 40 years for migratory bird research and conservation in the Paso del Istmo Biological Corridor. This project has included protecting/restoring bird habitat, establishing a long-term monitoring program, creating a migratory bird education program, and promoting sustainable tourism for birders. To reach these goals, Paso Pacífico has mapped habitat areas, characterized land cover, reforested, educated, and reached out to communities. In 2008, Paso Pacífico, along with other organizations, announced the Return to Forest project, aiming to restore about 1,000 acres of tropical forest in the most critically endangered ecosystems of Central America. Launched this year, Paso Pacífico’s Million Tree Campaign intends to raise $10 million by 2020 to plant one million native trees (over 20 native species) in Central America which will provide bird habitat and estimates to offset 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Paso Pacífico is also working with the MoSI Program, which consists of an international network of bird monitoring stations reaching across the northern Neotropics that reinforces preservation efforts through collaborative population monitoring. The program focuses on Neotropical migrants that breed in the United States and Canada and resident birds in the host countries as well. Starting in 2002, MoSI has operated over 200 stations in 15 different countries to help answer questions regarding locations of the most pronounced species thinning, factors driving population decline, relationships between climate and population change, and methods of combating dwindling populations. MoSI works by using standardized protocol which entails a system of fine mesh nets to capture birds during their non-breeding season. MoSI operators band the birds and compile information on the birds’ age, sex, and body condition, and then release them back into the wild. By collecting information on the birds’ full annual cycles, knowledge about what drives and/or limits populations is attainable, as well as when and where to focus future conservation efforts. You can donate to our programs here.

Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii)

Learn more:

Information Sheet: Migratory Birds and Riparian Species of Concern

IBP – MoSI Program

Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Initiative (archived page)

 

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Proyecto Noble—Salud y Educación helps support more than 2500 local schoolchildren across 25 rural schools in the Paso del Istmo Biological Corridor with educational supplies and nutritious school lunches. This project also helped build the Ostional Library, supports its full-time librarian, Anabel Chevez, and stocks the library with high-quality books. Moreover, it has been helping rural communities recover from last fall’s major floods, which were caused by Hurricane Nate.

Thanks to the contributions of Dick and Nancy Noble, the American Nicaraguan Foundation, and many others, Proyecto Noble increases well-being and educational opportunities across the communities and improves trust and understanding between us and our community partners. Our new board member, Chris Ayotte, recently made this informational video about Proyecto Noble. Enjoy!

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Nicaragua is losing one of its most iconic and colorful species – the Cyanoptera macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera). This subspecies of the scarlet macaw has a distinctive wing pattern and is critically endangered: by 2015, Nicaragua’s population had dwindled to a mere 14 birds!

So, with support from Loro Parque Fundación, the Brandywine Zoo, Projets Plus Action, and individual donors, Paso Pacifico has been working to rescue these macaws from the brink of extinction. Nicaragua’s last population is in the threatened dry tropical forests at Cosigüina in northern Nicaragua, so we focused on that area and the local villages of El Rosario and La Salvia.

In addition to monitoring the macaws in the field, we launched an educational program that taught 35 local children about the significance of the cyanoptera macaw and their habitat. The kids played games, painted, drew, saw videos, and even experienced theater through an official mascot—Macaito!

Macaito the Cyanoptera Macaw teaches children in the Cosiguina area

Macaito the Cyanoptera Macaw teaches children in the Cosiguina area

Macaito helped students to understand the importance of protecting his home and the surrounding forest. He told them about how hard life is for the macaws, telling stories of losing family to fires and poaching. Macaito is a lot of fun to work with, and with his help we hope to create a positive outlook on taking care of natural resources and the macaws. We look forward to continuing our work with the communities to protect the cyanoptera macaw and its habitat.

And guess what? Through our efforts, two macaw chicks have successfully fledged their nest. This is the first successful macaw nest documented in the area in over 20 years!

A healthy juvenile cyanoptera macaw

A healthy juvenile cyanoptera macaw

We are so excited! For more photos and details about this effort, we invite you to read our latest newsletter.

Your donations help us continue to protect the cyanoptera macaws!

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“I feel empowered, and now I look at myself as an entrepreneur. We went from informality to having vision . . . Aspiring is not only believing in dreams, it is changing one’s attitude to see the changes.” – Sonia, hostel owner, ELLAS Initiative

In 2011, we had a vision: to empower female “enviropreneurs” to harness market forces and employ voluntary solutions to environmental problems in their local communities. Then, with your help, a wonderful thing happened: our idea won the National Geographic Geotourism Challenge! With $883,116 from IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN), we went to work.

In the last six years, this multifaceted initiative has provided training to twenty-three female entrepreneurs who were seeking to establish or improve small businesses in tourism. Many of these include women-owned hostels and restaurants. Thanks to their improved capacity to provide tourism services, they are already experiencing an increase in visitors. We also helped to establish geotourism programs that range from snorkel tours and mountain biking to archaeological site visits and ox-cart rides. These tours are now increasing appreciation for the biodiversity around La Flor Wildlife Refuge while providing direct economic benefit to families and cooperatives from nearby communities.

Paso Pacifíco expects to see local geotourism continue to increase and benefit local economies and biodiversity. When geotourism is a major component of local household incomes, community members are more invested in protecting wildlife. With our partners, we will continue working to educate youth, support conservation, and empower communities!

Learn more about the ELLAS Initiative by reading our latest newsletter and previously shared blogs about the project.

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We are thrilled to share a major breakthrough here on the blog! Recently we were awarded a significant grant from the IUCN-Netherlands, and that means we will be able to complete the purchase of a beautiful forest area in the heart of the Paso del Istmo. In honor of the critically endangered black-handed spider monkeys that live there, we’ve named this 120-acre property the Mono Bayo Reserve. This forest is an important building block for the wildlife corridor and also provides mature habitat for the threatened yellow-naped amazon parrot and other unique mammals such as the tayra and sloth.

With the purchase of this land, we aim to preserve and restore animal paths that damaged by deforestation. Our next step, with help from our supporters, will be to build basic reserve infrastructure and set camera traps to monitor spider monkeys on the land. Primate Conservation Inc, the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, Prince Bernhard Nature Fund, Disney Conservation Fund and other partners will be joining this mission.

This new preserve would not have been possible without people like you! Individual donors helped make the initial good faith payment of $20,000 on the property. This matching support helped us to win the larger grant and use the money to save all of this habitat.

We could not be happier. All thanks to you!

Main Land Purchase Map

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As you may know, Nicaragua went through a serious drought earlier this year. In fact, it’s the worst dry spell Nicaragua has experienced in over 30 years. The dry tropical forests in the Paso Del Istmo that we work in have been hit hard, and as a result many species are struggling to find the water that they need to survive. One such species is the Mantled howler monkey. The Mantled howlers have already suffered losses in the past due to deforestation in the area, and now their numbers are declining even faster, possibly as a result of the drought. Scientists believe that the massive number of dying monkeys may be related to a mosquito-borne pathogen, or perhaps a result of the monkeys having to turn to different, potentially toxic, food sources as their usual ones were scarce in the drought. Earlier this year, Paso Pacifico verified over 100 monkey deaths in the Paso Del Istmo Biological Corridor, which is an exceptionally high number in a relatively small area. Paso Pacifico has submitted an application to the Nicaraguan government requesting funding to research this issue, and we are working with primate specialists from UC Davis in hopes that we will understand what is causing this mass extermination of the monkeys.

After observing multiple sick and dying monkeys, we set up watering stations for the monkeys across the dry tropical forest with the help of our Junior Rangers in an effort to alleviate some of the hardships on the ecosystem that came with the drought. Inspired by our Junior Rangers’ initiative to help the monkeys, locals began an organization called Salvemos Los Monos de Rivas (Save the Monkeys of Rivas). Salvemos Los Monos has recruited hundreds of volunteers, who have done incredible work in Nicaragua. Salvemos Los Monos de Rivas regularly refills watering stations with fresh water as well as fruit. They have also begun a reforestation campaign in San Juan Del Sur, where they’ve already planted over 80 trees. We encourage you to join our efforts by donating to Paso Pacifico, or if you’re in the San Juan del Sur area, reach out to the Salvemos los Monos group.

Donate to our programs here.

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