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EspañolThe mysteriously rich diversity of life on the isle of Madagascar might have arrived there in part on “floating islands” carried by ocean currents, researchers now say.
Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, is the sole home to a wide variety of animal species, most of which are thought to have reached Madagascar after plate tectonics separated it from Africa and other continents.
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But not all scientists have been convinced by this theory.
“There has been a great debate about rafting over at least the past 50 years,” Samonds said. “While many authors have argued that dispersal events by terrestrial, land-dwelling animals across great distances of water are virtually impossible, others have argued that even unlikely events are certain to occur if the time elapsed is long enough, and that prevailing ocean currents could have aided these journeys.”
The climate and ecology of Canada’s Maritimes and coastal Nicaragua are very different, but just like in New Brunswick, Nicaragua’s “coastal areas support economic, cultural, and recreational activities, as well as a diversity of flora and fauna.” For these reasons, and more, the findings in this paper from CAKE (Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange) are relevant to us:
Like the authors of this study, we are interested in exploring “the potential for humans to adapt and use technology to overcome economic [and environmental] damage” in the face of climate change. Also like the authors, we think that important steps in any restoration project include local data collection, risk assessment, interviewing for stakeholder opinions, mapping physical characteristics, local training, and conducting community workshops.
Our Coastal-Marine Research Project includes many of the same strategies and methods as this study, and we are pleased to be able to compare notes with and learn lessons from our fellow conservation scientists in Canada. Our experience lends support to the authors’ conclusion that successful adaptation to climate change is a holistic approach based on the relative strength of social and economic systems, the health of the local environment, and the reach of a local information network.
Panthera’s February Newsletter is out, with some exciting news for them. They’re reporting the first Panthera camera trap photo of a jaguar taken in Nicaragua. You can see their photo here. Ground-truthing is providing verification of the existence of a species whose populations have not been carefully observed and studied. Camera traps are extremely helpful to conservation science.
After decades of decline and without a documented sighting for over 15 years, it was thought that jaguars were extinct in western Nicaragua. Thanks to the camera traps set up by Paso Pacifico intern Robert Alexander Euwe, a graduate student in wildlife management, the male jaguar pictured below busted that myth in 2010.
In August of 2010, our intern, Robert Alexander Euwe, caught this jaguar in a camera trap in the Paso del Istmo, where we work on the Pacifico slop of Nicaragua. Not only do camera traps provide undeniable evidence of jaguars’ presence in western Nicaragua, establishing the importance of Paso del Istmo as a migratory corridor, their unique pelt markings allow biologists to identify individual members of the species.
Discovering Nicaraguan Jaguar’s Wildlife Heritage
Did you know that Nicaragua is home to a rich variety of biodiversity? Spotting Nicaraguan wild animals like jaguars, monkeys, and tropical birds can be pretty hard, but it highlights the importance of conservation efforts in the region.
The jaguar stands out as one of the most iconic and mysterious species. Our specialists continue to uncover interesting facts about jaguars in Nicaragua. Wanna know some? For example, they have a crucial role in maintaining the balance of the environment. Also, they’re great when it comes to adapting to different habitats across the country.
You can learn more about our jaguar conservation program here. Or read our other blog posts on jaguars here.
Congratulations to Panthera!
We’re pleased to partner with the Ocean Recovery Alliance and other organizations to empower citizen scientists to alert the world to hotspots of floating trash. The hope is that tracking and mapping floating debris, will help drive cleanup efforts, including the potentially profitable harvest of floating plastics for reuse.
Global Alert – Floating Trash from Ocean Recovery Alliance on Vimeo.
Global Alert – Floating Trash is a global project operated by the Ocean Recovery Alliance, and announced as a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010. The platform allows for community reporting, like a “neighborhood watch” for floating trash hotspots in rivers, lakes the ocean, or along coastlines. This information empowers local communities to make improvements in their local waters vis-a-vis plastic waste and floating debris, and will hopefully inspire new technologies for removal, catchment, recycling and re-use of the waste when collected. www.oceanrecov.org
Paso Pacifico’s Executive Director Sarah Otterstrom and Communications Director Wendy Purnell just returned from SIMA’s 22nd annual Waterman’s Weekend, where Paso Pacifico was honored as one of their 20 beneficiaries! The turnout included more than 675 of the surf industry’s most notable environmental stewards, and the event raised over $400,000 for non-profits like us that work to conserve ocean resources.
Sarah Otterstrom, Paso Pacifico’s Executive Director
Photo: shop-eat-surf.com
Jessie Creel with Paso Pacifico’s Wendy Purnell
Photo: shop-eat-surf.com
Paso Pacifico enjoyed a festive weekend and was able to meet organizations and individuals who are as enthusiastic about the environment as we are! The weekend’s itinerary included the Annual Waterman’s Classic Golf Tournament at Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana point on August 11 and the Annual Waterman’s Ball at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel on August 12.
Honorees were chosen for their impact on the sport of surfing as well as their work in ocean conservation, and included big wave surfing champion Greg Long as Waterman of the Year, former Malibu mayor and environmental activist Jeff”Zuma Jay” Wagner as Environmentalist of the Year, and Hawaiian big wave surfer and board shaper George Downing with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Paul Naude with the weekend’s honorees George Downing,
Greg Long and Jefferson “Zuma Jay” Wagner
Photo: Brent Hilleman via business.transworld.net
For more information on the weekend’s activities and beneficiaries, as well as details on the work we’ve accomplished with SIMA’s grant money, see the post below!
Yesterday, the New York Times reported on the costs and benefits of factory farmed tilapia and they zoomed in on Nicaragua.
Dr. McCrary has spent the past decade studying how a small, short-lived tilapia farm degraded Lake Apoyo in Nicaragua. “One small cage screwed up the entire lake — the entire lake!” he said of the farm, which existed from 1995 to 2000.
Waste from the cages polluted the pristine ecosystem, and some tilapia escaped. An aquatic plant called charra, an important food for fish, disappeared, leaving the lake a wasteland. Today, some species of plants and fish are slowly recovering, but others are probably gone forever, said Dr. McCrary, who works for the Nicaraguan foundation FUNDECI.
Read the entire article, which reminds us that choices we make here affect ecosystems near and far.
We’ve just received a press release from our friend Wallace J. Nichols:
As ocean pollution experts meet in Hawaii, disturbing new report chronicles effects of decades of plastic pollution on sea turtles—and what we can do about it.
…Experts on plastic pollution from around the world, determined to solve this growing problem, have gathered this week for the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, a mecca for green sea turtles.
Now, in a recent editorial published in the Marine Turtle Newsletter, marine biologists Colette Wabnitz, PhD, of the University of British Columbia and Wallace “J.” Nichols, PhD, of the California Academy of Sciences, lay out the entire disturbing history of plastics in the ocean, from the first scientific report to the latest surveys, to call attention to the concerns from 1972 to today. The report is grim, but provides a ray of hope in the form of proactive steps that can and should be undertaken to curtail overproduction and careless discard of single-use plastics.
The authors were careful to acknowledge that certain plastics have done much good in the world. The report firmly lays the blame at the feet of so-called “disposable” plastics: commonly used beer cups, water bottles and caps, grocery bags, plastic utensils, and so forth, intended to be used just once and thrown away. While these plastics are cheap and convenient, they are also durable and buoyant—making for a potent and deadly combination in the water.
Though plastics like these do break down from exposure to sunlight and other elements, the molecules of plastic never fully biodegrade—they just break into smaller and smaller pieces but never completely disappear. Eventually, many of these small particles get blown or washed into tributaries that feed rivers which flow to the ocean where plastics coalesce in ocean currents. Here they swirl in the eddying currents forming a sort of plastic soup where they float virtually forever and are often—the whole pieces and broken bits—ingested by the creatures of the sea. Once in the guts they can do great harm, or even kill, animals such as sea turtles.
…“Sea turtle researchers and conservationists have a unique role to play in our cultural evolution away from plastic pollution, as we have watched the havoc the surge of plastic has caused first hand”, notes Dr. Colette Wabnitz of the University of British Columbia.
“Sea turtle researchers from around the world have been submitting photos of interactions with plastic to the Image Library on Seaturtle.org. Given the amount of disposable plastic I see alongside the road everyday and the garbage my kids pick up whenever we go to the beach, the results are not surprising”, added Dr. Michael Coyne, founder and director of SeaTurtle.org.
Learn more: http://www.seaturtle.org/plasticpollution/
Liza Gonzalez, Paso Pacifico’s national director, has received a scholarship from the Ocean Conservancy to attend the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference in Hawaii later this month.
Liza will represent Nicaragua at this annual symposium which brings ocean conservationists together from around the world to:
- Heighten global understanding and appreciation of the threats posed by marine debris, the cost to coastal communities and marine biodiversity, and the sources of marine debris
- Highlight recent advances in marine debris research
- Encourage sharing of strategies and best practices to assess, reduce, and prevent the impacts of marine debris
- Provide an opportunity for the development of collaborative solutions to real problems, including specific bilateral or multi-country strategies
- Emphasize the importance of individual behavioural change in preventing marine debris
Liza is well suited to represent Central American concerns at this conference. A trained ecologist, before she came to Paso Pacifico, Liza helped develop strategies for the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor project and managed all of Nicaragua’s national parks and protected areas. As our national director, Liza overseas beach cleanups and ocean conservation programs on both of Nicaragua’s coasts.
From our January newsletter:
The endangered Black-handed Spider Monkey is locally extinct across most of western Nicaragua. Through a grant provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service International Affairs’ Wildlife without Borders program, we have begun a monitoring program to document primate populations and to provide employment to local farmers to protect Spider Monkeys at key private reserves across the Paso del Istmo Biological Corridor.
Paso Pacífico will also be able to more effectively protect the Spider Monkey and other threatened wildlife thanks to a scholarship provided to our staff by the USFWS-International Programs, Wildlife Without Borders. This course is training our team in the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. These Standards teach us that our conservation efforts must include measurable objectives and employ strategies addressing the highest priority threats. This course is led by leading experts from the non-profit organization Foundations of Success. Paso Pacífico’s is grateful to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for supporting our “conservation in practice”.
If you don’t receive our newsletter but would like to, you can sign up here: https://pasopacifico.org/e-newsletter.html
From Kim Williams-Guillén, our director of conservation science:
There are two main lava tube caves, and several smaller caves. The largest cave has a colony of what I believe may be thousands of bats, but we have not done any counts. We have captured five species leaving this cave, Pteronotus parnelli, P. personatus, P. gymnonotus, and P. davyi. On one occasion I caught 3 Mormoops megalophylla which was the first time that species had been recorded in Nicaragua but I have not caught it since then, so I do not know if they were just there “by accident”. All of these bat species are insect eating bats. It is hard to film in that cave, as it is very humid inside (camera lenses fog over) and the bats hide in branches of the cave that are difficult to access, but it is possible to film just inside of the mouth of the cave, or to film the bats emerging from the cave.
The second cave, which is the cave that tourists can enter when with a park ranger, is much more pleasant and dry, but it has relatively few bats. I am not sure if the bats I saw in there were Carollia (fruit eating) or Glossophaga (nectar feeding) bats. There are many areas in and near Masaya where you can spot fruit and nectar feeding bats.