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Tagging a Hawksbill in Nicaragua

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Paso Pacífico has been managing Nicaragua’s participation in the Ocean Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup for five years. This past weekend, Comunidad Connect, TESÓN, and Barrio Planta helped us round up hundreds of volunteers who picked up over 2000 pounds of trash along the beaches and waterways of several coastal communities. You can read more about it (in Spanish) at El Nuevo Diario. This coming weekend is part two of our International Coastal clean up, when we’ll recruit more volunteers to pick up trash from other beaches.

Photo courtesy of NICA

For the third year in a row, we were also joined by NICA, who coordinated the cleanup on the beaches of the fishing village El Transito (pictured above), gathering 48 volunteers to work alongside 13 municipal employees who collected 4500 pounds of garbage and recyclables on Saturday.

NICA’s mission is to empower Nicaragua through community development, helping the country become more self-sufficient and a greater participant in the global economy. They work on sustainability issues in rural communities and we look forward to future collaboration with them, especially after brainstorming with them at the Clinton Global Initiative this week.

Photo courtesy of Erin Orias

NICA’s Individual Aid Program organizes a group of women to clean the coast three days a week for a few hours each day. After completing 78 hours of community work over a 13-week period, the women receive benefits of food and/or construction materials. Since the program was founded in 2006, El Transito Beach has been among Nicaragua’s most pristine.

We are pleased to partner with NICA. When we asked how they felt about this weekend’s event, they said this:

“The best part of the cleanup was that we sent the message to local people that when we join forces with other organizations and we work together, we can achieve our goal of a clean coast and show to our next generations that they can participate in this change.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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Over at the WILDblog, Brad Nahill, recalls “Exploring Nicaragua’s Paso del Istmo“:

Brad Nahill spots a turtle
(photo by Sarah Rudeen)

We headed out by boat to explore the spectacular stretch of coast, possibly the most beautiful and dramatic of coastline that I’ve ever seen (and I live in Oregon). Crashing waves batter sloping flat rocks and white sand beaches hide behind rocky-forested outcrops. Moving north along the coast of the wildlife refuge, we stopped in front of La Flor beach, one of a handful of beaches in the world that host the arribada, a mass nesting event of olive ridley sea turtles. My years of experience being quiet around turtles on nesting beaches went right out the window as I let out a yell as a small head popped out of the water not far from our boat. The turtle heard me and dropped right back into the water, but there were plenty more bobbing around.

We were really happy to show Brad the beautiful region where we work, and are grateful for the support of his organization. SEEtheWild, which he co-founded, protects endangered wildlife through conservation travel.

 

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Meet a bat we didn’t know existed in Nicaragua, follow a tagged sea turtle, and help us name the next turtle we tag.

Conservation in Action
On the night of June 27 on Brasilon beach in southwestern Nicaragua, a green sea turtle hauled herself ashore, dragged herself up the beach to the treeline, dug her nest, laid her eggs, and went on a walkabout.

As she began winding down, Paso Pacifico’s turtle rangers covered the green turtle’s eyes (turtles are very sensitive to light) and held her in place long enough to attach a SPOT5 satellite transmitter to her shell. Named Saralisa after Paso Pacifico’s founders and directors Sarah Otterstrom and Liza Gonzalez, you can follow this green sea turtle — who has traveled all the way to Oaxaca, Mexico — on her tracking page at seaturtle.org.

Read more about Saralisa, her contributions to science, and more in our August newsletter.

Act Now!
Donate today and help us name the next turtle we tag.

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In yesterday’s Arizona Daily Sun:

NAU School of Forestry wildlife ecology professor Carol Chambers, and Nicaraguan bat expert Arnulfo Ramon Medina Fitoria netted, measured, weighed and documented the only Phylloderma stenops bat ever captured and recorded in the Central American country. This particular bat weighs about as much as 20 Hershey’s kisses and usually is captured in mist nets above streams in evergreen forests.

Learn more about our research on bats by visiting our website or reading other bat posts on our blog.

Learn more about partner organization Bat Conservation International.

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The California state Senate voted this week to make the endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtle the official marine reptile of California. Assuming Governor Jerry Brown signs the legislation into law, October 15th will officially be Leatherback Conservation Day in the state of California. Mark your calendars!

Paso Pacifico’s head turtle ranger, Salvador Sanchez,
inspects a leatherback turtle on one of the beaches
where we work to protect sea turtle nests.

Every year leatherbacks migrate from the warmer waters off the coast of Central America where they nest to colder waters off California’s coast where they feed on jellyfish. Considering our US headquarters are located in Ventura and the turtle nesting beaches we protect are in Nicaragua, the symbolism of the leatherbacks’ annual migration is especially meaningful to us. We’ll be looking to partner with other conservation organizations to observe the first ever Leatherback Conservation Day in California.

Please contact us if you’re interested in recognizing Leatherback Conservation Day: wendy (at) pasopacifico.org

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Our friends at the Turtle Conservancy have launched The Tortoise, their new magazine dedicated to the appreciation and conservation of tortoises and turtles and their habitats worldwide.

“Turtles and tortoises have been on our earth for more than 200 million years, before the great dinosaurs roamed the planet, and today they face unprecedented challenges for their survival. No vertebrate Order has a greater percentage of species facing extinction. This publication is about the wonder of turtles and tortoises and about the conservation challenges they face,” says Eric Goode, one of the magazine editors and President of the Turtle Conservancy.

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