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Honu Has Returned to Brasilon

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This fall, Paso Pacífico’s team of wildlife biologists and machete-wielding rangers faced huge spiders, floods, earthquakes, and chest-deep swamps to place two dozen camera traps in remote forest areas. Their goal? To capture the elusive jaguars long thought extinct in the tropical forests of Nicaragua.

Two years ago, an intern’s camera trap captured one, proving their existence and highlighting the need for their protection. Jaguars require large areas of understory to hunt their prey, making them extremely vulnerable to deforestation. Paso Pacífico’s motion-triggered cameras capture carnivores and other mammals helping scientists gauge forest health to prioritize habitat restoration efforts.

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Mother Jones:

“A global effort to prevent all future species extinctions would cost about $80 billion a year, or $11.42 annually from every person on the planet, according to a study published last week in Science.”

Scientific American:

“More specifically, the study finds that lowering the extinction risk for all of the species that are currently known to be threatened would cost the first $4 billion per year. Protecting and managing key habitats would cost an additional $76.1 billion.”

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From the Turtle Conservancy’s October Newsletter:

Eric Goode along with writer Glenn O’Brien and Kortnie Coles traveled to the Pacific coast of Mexico to witness a natural phenomenon called an arribada (the Spanish word for “arrival”). During a 3 week period, over 500,000 Olive Ridley Sea Turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) nest on a 3 km stretch of Escobilla Beach in Oaxaca. This nesting event peaks during the month of September. Only three species of turtles exhibit this behavior: Giant South American River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa), Kemp’s Ridley Turtles (Lepidochelys kempii), and Olive Ridley Turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea). The Escobilla Beach Olive Ridley arribada in Oaxaca is by far the largest.

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Our friends at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project join the opposition of the delisting of the Hawaiian green sea turtle:

Turtles Face Premature Loss of Protections and Return of Hunting

Hawaiian green sea turtle populations have increased steadily since their hunting was banned and they were given federal protections and listed as threatened under the ESA in 1978. However, the Hawaiian honu is far from reaching the official government recovery goal of at least 5,000 nesters per year. Today, the population is only at about 10 percent of that goal, with an average around 390 nesting females per year between 2000-2009 in the Hawaiian archipelago, with a high of 843 in 2011.

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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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