Paso Pacifico

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Tareas desde Casa

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No hay obstáculos para aprender cuando se tiene el deseo y la decisión, por eso nuestros Juniors Rangers continúan desde sus hogares aprendiendo sobre la naturaleza y resguardando su entorno y su familia como unos verdaderos guardianes.

English translation: Working from Home

There are no obstacles to learning when you have the desire and determination. Our Junior Rangers continue to learn from their homes about nature and protecting their environment and their family as true guardians.

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Maestras de educación ambiental participaron en el Big Day (conteo de aves migratorias y residentes) éste sábado 09 de mayo 2020.

Environmental education teachers participated in Global Big Day (bird count of migratory and resident birds) this Saturday, May 9, 2020.

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En honor a la celebración del día internacional de los Océanos y del Medio Ambiente que se celebra en la primera semana de junio, nuestros pequeños Juniors Rangers participaron en un desafío artístico que consistía en hacer una manualidad, usando materiales reciclados en sus hogares.

A continuación les compartimos los hermosos trabajos realizados por ellos con ayuda de sus padres de familia. Las fotografías han sido enviada por cada Papá o Mamá de nuestros niños ya que estamos trabajando desde sus casas con cada uno de ellos.

English translation: Art Challenge

In honor of World Oceans Day and World Environment Day, which are celebrated in the first week of June, our little Junior Rangers participated in an art challenge that consisted of making a craft using recycled materials in their homes.

Below, we share the beautiful work they did with their parents’ help. Each photo was sent by each child’s dad or mom, since the children are all working from home.

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On April 22, 2015, USAID issued the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge in an effort to bring together international communities to create solutions that address critical wildlife crime issues. One of the issues highlighted by the challenge is the network of well-established international transit routes that poachers and traffickers use to move their products to customers. These transit routes are the backbone to the global wildlife trafficking industry which generates billions of dollars in illegal revenue annually. However, many of the routes are largely unmapped and therefore difficult to monitor.

In Nicaragua, poachers take the eggs of endangered sea turtles that nest on the beaches to sell on the black market. There are four species of sea turtles that nest on the Pacific coast: the Hawksbill, Green, Leatherback, and Olive Ridley. Individual sea turtle eggs can sell for several dollars a piece. With hundreds of eggs in each nest, thousands of eggs are taken each year. In an effort to deter poachers and protect the eggs, Paso Pacifico began a project designing artificial sea turtle eggs with embedded GSM-GPS trackers. We entered our project into the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, and out of the 300+ entries from around the world, we were selected as one of the 16 winners! Our project was also featured in Obama’s Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking’s annual report.

gpseggs

We are currently in the process of perfecting the design of our eggs, which has proven to be a difficult task. Sea turtle eggs are soft and flexible in order to protect them when they are being laid, and matching the weight, size, and consistency of the eggs while hiding a battery and GPS tracker inside is no small feat. To get the eggs just right, we are using 3D printed prototypes and working with a Hollywood special effects artist. We are also working with TILE, a company that makes small GPS and Bluetooth enabled trackers that work on a network of Bluetooth devices for real time tracking. While intended to help people from misplacing their keys, the technology used by TILE is very applicable to our sea turtle egg project. TILE will allow smartphone users to download a mobile app and help detect stolen sea turtle nests via the data received from our very own artificial eggs! The hope is that these eggs will reveal transit routes used by poachers, allowing authorities to take action to inhibit these well-hidden illegal trafficking organizations.

 

Sea turtles are crucial members to the ocean ecosystem. They are an umbrella species, which means they have complex habitat requirements which encompass a whole range of organisms. By protecting sea turtle populations, we can ensure the future of ocean biodiversity. Scientists also look at sea turtles as indicators of ecosystem health. For example, green turtles are some of the few species that graze on seagrass, which helps to keep algae populations in check, and the structure of the seagrass beds in place. Fish, crustaceans, and shellfish use the seagrass beds as breeding and developmental grounds, and without the beds their numbers are declining, which is an issue as humans use those creatures for food. Sea turtle eggs also provide food to the invertebrates and wildlife along the beach, and also provide nutrients to coastal vegetation, which reduces erosion and creates biodiversity on shore. Sea turtles also provide a long-term source of income for the local communities as tourists come from around the world to see the turtles and their eggs. Our partners at seeturtles.org have custom tours to our nesting beaches and Paso Pacifico is providing training to local guides in order to promote sustainable sea turtle tourism.

Contribute to our work here.

 

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This spring we were thrilled to receive Patagonia’s Miracle Grant award. This support has helped us advance our mission to restore and protect endangered forest and coastal ecosystems in Nicaragua. We have applied these generous funds to two specific programs:

1. our work linking the Nicaraguan surfing community to ocean conservation.

2. the protection of the critically endangered Robber frog (Craugastor ranoides)

 

Surfer-led Ocean Conservation

Nicaragua’s Pacific coast is home to some of the best surf in Central America. Since 2011, our surfer-focused ocean conservation program has worked to educate and empower local Nicaraguans as ocean stewards.

Through support from Patagonia, we are preparing a series of trainings focused on watershed protection, reef biodiversity, and laws related to coastal access. These workshops will take place during a surf education event organized by SurfNica Magazine held this June. More than thirty local surfers are expected to attend, many of whom live in poverty and have an average educational level of primary school. This knowledge is key to empowering local surfers and building a corps of local ocean stewards.

The Critically Endangered Robber Frog

In late 2014, we discovered the presence of a Robber frog (Craugastor ranoides) population on the southern shores of Lake Nicaragua. This species has disappeared throughout its range in Costa Rica and there is only one other small population left in the wild.

With Patagonia’s support, our community forest rangers are monitoring the known population, marking individuals in order to document survivorship & movement patterns, surveying streams, & working with local landowners to limit disturbance to the watershed such as the introduction of chytrid fungus. Our ultimate goal is to acquire the land where we have found the Robber frog and set it aside as a national park.

We are grateful to have the support of Patagonia, Inc. and look forward to sharing more about its impact in the coming months.

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www.turtlefriend.org

Watch, track, and protect sea turtles…LIVE!

In early 2014, two eight-year-olds (Jonas & Matson) came to us with the vision of creating an app to broadcast the life cycle of sea turtles in the Pacific. They called it “Turtle Friend” and their goal was to create an education and fundraising tool for sea turtle conservation.

What is it?

An app & website that:

  • broadcasts live nesting events, sea turtle egg hatchings, and other important parts of the life cycle of sea turtles.
  • tracks sea turtles via satellite transmitters and displays their location in the ocean
  • provides biological information on sea turtle species
Why Turtle Friend?

Sea turtles have been living on this planet for over 100 million years! But now, because of human impact, they are struggling to survive and some are near thebrink of extinction.

The Pacific coast of Nicaragua has some of the most important sea turtle nesting beaches in Central America. In a single night, thousands of female olive ridley turtles crowd the beach to lay their eggs in one of the greatest natural events on the planet. The nonprofitPaso Pacifico and community partners are working together to protect these and other threatened turtle species.

Turtle Friend will help tell this story….LIVE! By bringing the global community’s attention to the importance of these animals in a new and engaging way we can help protect this important piece of our natural history.

Okay, how does Turtle Friend work?

To realize Jonas and Matson’s dream, Turtle Friend will be both an app and website where you will be able to watch (LIVE) sea turtles at various stages of their life cycle and track them via satellite transmitters on their migrations through the Pacific.

Live Stream: Imagine watching a live stream of THOUSANDS of sea turtles coming to shore to lay their eggs in one of the greatest nesting events on the planet. Turtle Friend will broadcast events like these using HD video cameras connected to the Internet live streaming via Ustream. Ustream is one of the leading video streaming platforms and will provide us with the technology to share these live broadcasts worldwide.

Satellite Tracking: Turtle Friend will also track sea turtles via satellite transmitters on their migration throughout the Pacific ocean. Paso Pacifico’s team in Nicaragua have extensive experience attaching these satellite transmitters to the backs of sea turtles. Once attached, these transmitters will send a signal via satellite to a web-based tracking system. The Turtle Friend app will then display these turtle’s location, distance traveled, and biological information.

What’s this gonna cost?

Funding goal: $25,000

– $9,000 – website & app development and maintenance for 3 years

– $5,500 – 3 years of staff time for broadcasting & maintenance.

– $3,500 – 3 year livestream account via U-Stream.

– $3,000 – cameras

– $1,500 – perks

– $1,250 – Kickstarter fee

– $1,250 (ish) – credit card processing fee

Total = $25,000.00

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by Sarah Otterstrom

I grew up spending lazy summers along the shores of northern lakes in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Maybe this is where my love of “biodiversity” was born. If anything, it was where I first learned to recognize the magic of the natural world.

At the lake, my cousin and I built a tree fort with a plush carpet made of fresh moss and we decorated the ceiling with pine leaves. We imagined living a simple life balanced between gathering and storing wild berries, and relaxing to the sound of the whispering pines. During those times, we were part of the forest, just like our fort.

For much of my adult life I have returned to spend summers at the lake. For years I set out on these trips with a stubborn naiveté, that the ecological problems in Nicaragua were separate from the problems in the Inland Northwest.

Two summers ago, however, I was huckleberry picking with my two young sons in the woodlands surrounding Priest Lake, Idaho. We heard the chuckle of two young boys and the sound of BB gun fire. I figured, all is well, just some kids goofing around. Well, the laughter continued and it soon developed into what we might call “bullying”. I could not resist walking through the woods to see the source. Standing there were two young boys, BB guns in hand, poking a dying bird.

It was a Western Tanager (pictured below).

“Western Tanager” by http://www.naturepicsonline.com/ licensed by Creative Commons

The Western Tanager is a colorful migrant that spends its summers in the Pacific Northwest and winters in Mexico and Central America, including Nicaragua. The bird that was killed by these boys may well have been a bird Nicaraguan “Junior Rangers” had worked to keep safe. I was devastated. While I preach to Nicaraguan children to spare the life of birds, children in my country are busy doing the same thing, but with higher caliber weaponry. My magical corner in the Northwest was not as singular as I had imagined it and I struggled to explain such hypocrisy to my children.

The lesson to me from this experience is that, as conservationists, the solutions we are all looking for must be global. Paso Pacifico can be effective at disarming Nicaraguan children of their sling-shots and we know that our small effort is worthwhile, because each bird is valued. But, as long as we work in isolation from the entire geography of the bird’s life cycle, we will fall short.

By surrendering their slingshots and pledging to protect wildlife, these two young Nicaraguan boys earned binoculars and have become students in Paso Pacifico’s environmental education programs.

Fortunately, in the bird world, partnerships abound and through them we are finding ways to safeguard birds throughout their migratory path.

Poco a poco, bird by bird, Paso Pacifico and other bird conservationists will arm the world with binoculars and help protect birds and ecosystems they make whole.

Please help us give 100 children in Nicaragua a chance to enjoy a tanager with binoculars:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/binoculars-for-slingshots/x/6418779

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Marcos inspects a Melipona beecheii worker captured at a flowering bush on the property of a beekeeper.

It is dry season in Paso del Istmo, with trade winds wicking moisture from the Pacific slope forests causing upwelling of nutrient-rich water offshore. Deciduous tree species are dropping their leaves and tree crowns full of yellow or purple blooms dot the landscape. The dry season blossoms bring increased bee activity and with it a flurry of projects in our meliponiculture program.

In the rainy season of 2012, intern Sarah Rudeen and veterinary student Marcos Calero Pérez piloted Paso Pacifico’s bee program by reaching out to keepers of stingless bees in the vicinities of the Flor and Ostayo rivers, gathering data and leading workshops on modern stingless beekeeping techniques developed in Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica.
Marcos Calero Pérez and intern Richard Joyce are carrying the program forward by assisting in the transfer of hives from logs and branches to wooden boxes. These specially designed boxes allow for less disruptive and more sanitary harvest of honey, easier monitoring, and, most importantly, the ability to divide hives, increasing the number of hives without having to cut trees and branches from the forest.
In addition to supporting and promoting the keeping of native stingless bees, we are collecting data on the bee diversity in the isthmus and using pollen samples to better understand the relationships between bees, native flora, and cultivated crops.
When dry season comes to a close, we will transition to connecting honey producers with stores in Rivas and Managua where they can get a good price for their product. In addition, we will create a plan for a women’s beekeeping cooperative.

Stay tuned for more updates on the project!
A rustic log hive in the Ostayo watershed. Paso Pacifico is helping beekeepers transfer hives to boxes that facilitate harvest and hive division.
Marcos Calero Pérez teaches children the basics of Melipona bee biology.

 

Roble de sabana, a dry season blooming tree.

 

Bait for attracting swarms of Tetragonisca angustula, a small stingless bee whose honey is highly medicinal for eye ailments.
Special thanks to author and photographer Richard Joyce!

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In October of last year I had the opportunity to travel to Nicaragua to learn more about Paso Pacifico and its work in the Paso del Istmo. The trip was a crash course in all things Paso Pacifico. In just five short days we patrolled beaches with the Sea Turtle Rangers, climbed trees looking for endangered Yellow-naped parrots, met the Junior Rangers at the Karen Warren & Susan White Spider Monkey Sanctuary and met with a significant portion of the staff. It was possibly the five most exhilarating and exhausting days of my life and I am so grateful for what we were able to experience and learn from this organization and its members.
By far the best part of trip was getting to meet with so many of the organization’s employees. I rarely experience such genuine warmth and compassion so quickly after meeting someone and all of the folks we met had these qualities. They were especially considerate of our language barrier and maintained their composure when listening to us stumble through what little Spanish we could conjure. I understood after meeting these individuals why Paso Pacifico has been so successful. Their interactions with one another and with the members of the various communities demonstrated the real strength of the organization. Compassionate people like this are the ones who make conservation happen and who, with persistence, will change the world.
As of earlier this month I am proud to say that now I too am a Paso Pacifico employee. I will be helping the organization manage its media presence and organize its digital media. I am proud to now be a permanent part of this community and look forward getting to know them better, hear their stories, and be a part of conserving this amazing landscape.



Salvador Sanchez, Paso Pacifico’s Turtle Program Coordinator, explains the life cycle of a sea turtle at La Flor Beach Natural Reserve.
Marcela Gutierrez recently joined the Paso Pacifico team and now leads our reforestation project in which we are reforesting two major watersheds. She was instrumental in the community focus group we attended in the small community of Tortuga.
Paso Pacifico’s Turtle Rangers took the morning to explain to us their work protecting and researching sea turtles at Brasilon Beach north of the community of Ostional.
Julie Martinez leads our environmental education program and is well known in many of the small communities in the Paso del Istmo.
Daniel Sanchez, one of Paso Pacifico’s Turtle Rangers, took the afternoon to give us a tour of the mangrove forest near the community of Ostional. His extensive knowledge of the local ecology and gentle demeanor make him a great naturalist and guide.



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