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From the Wildlife Conservation Society, Nicaragua:

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From the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Nicaragua Sea Turtle
Conservation Program we are pleased to announce the new WCS-Nicaragua
Youth Group blog. This blog has been created by a group of young
adults from Pearl Lagoon, located on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua,
as a tool that allows them to broadcast their activities in support of
sea turtle conservation while learning computer skills and engaging
them in collective writing. We invite you to visit the blog!

Any comment or experience that you might want to share with them will
be greatly appreciated, as it will spark their interest and provide
them with first-hand information about other conservation initiatives
around the world.

You can visit the blog by clicking on: http://wcsyouthgroup.wordpress.com

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Desde el Programa de Conservación de Tortugas Marinas de la Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) en Nicaragua nos complace anunciar el nuevo
blog del Grupo Juvenil de la WCS en Nicaragua. Este blog ha sido
creado por un grupo de muchachos de Pearl Lagoon, en la costa Caribe
de Nicaragua, como una herramienta que les permita difundir sus
actividades en favor de la conservación de las tortugas marinas
mientras aprenden a manejar la computadora y a redactar pequeños
escritos en grupo. A pesar de que el blog está en creole (inglés),
ellos también entienden español. Queremos invitarles a que lo visiten!

Cualquier comentario o experiencia que quieran compartir con ellos
será bienvenido ya que aumentará su interés y les proporcionará
información de primera mano sobre otras iniciativas de conservación en
distintos puntos del globo.

Pueden visitar el blog haciendo click en: http://wcsyouthgroup.wordpress.com

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From this month’s CAVU newsletter:

The first of CAVU’s three films released this year was created in collaboration with NGO Paso Pacífico. “Paso del Istmo” is a narrow ribbon of land between the vast Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean which harbors remnant dry tropical forest, and species such as spider monkeys, yellow-naped parrots, freshwater bullsharks and mass arrivals of olive ridley sea turtles. It is a crucial land bridge for species that migrate between North and South America.

The film portrays the region’s hardworking people, their culture and wildlife, and Paso Pacifico’s efforts to ensure a sustainable future for all. It is to be used as an educational tool in schools and community groups locally, and with international donors and investors to help convey the importance of sustainable alternatives and conservation in this unique area of Nicaragua. Selects from the film were recently featured at the Clinton Global Initiative 2010 to highlight the work of women in small communities in Nicaragua.

In November it was screened in its entirety at the XIV Congreso de la Socie- dad para la Biología y Conservación in Costa Rica before an international audience of scientists, conservationists and NGOs.

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The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of the Day is the Green Turtle.

The Green Turtle, Chelonia mydas, is listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM. This long-lived and highly migratory species is found in tropical and, to a lesser extent, sub-tropical waters throughout the globe. The Green Turtle has the most numerous and widely dispersed nesting sites of the seven turtle species.

Green Turtles are among the species who regularly nest along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua on the nesting beaches where our Turtle Rangers protect the turtles and their eggs until the hatchlings can make their way to the sea.

For more on this species, check out the IUCN Fact Sheet.

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Earlier this month, the first ever Census of Marine Life was published, a culmination of a decade of research. Nearly three thousand scientists from around the world worked together to establish an oceanic baseline for future study.

The census includes over 240,000 marine species (presumed to be 25% of the total number of species in the worlds oceans) and has three points of focus:
  1. diversity
  2. distribution
  3. abundance
“The census found life everywhere we looked,” Ian Poiner, chairman of the scientific steering committee, told Science, ” and it is much more complex and interconnected than we expected. Probably the other [key finding] is that we humans have had far more impact on the oceans than we had imagined.”
We look forward to further studies from this bottom-up approach to conservation science and will continue to empower citizen scientists and advance our own understanding of the marine ecosystems in the region where we work.

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De nuestros amigos de Parque Maritimo el Coco:

Nos es grato informarles que la madrugada del miercoles 1ro de Septiembre del 2010 inicio la primera arribada masiva de tortugas marinas de la variedad Paslama en playa La Flor. Por ser la primera arribada esperada desde el mes de Julio se estima que sera de entre 3,000 a 7,000 tortugas en un periodo de 4 a 5 noches.  

Las tortugas solamente salen por la noche cuando la temperatura de la arena es baja. Ellas caminan sobre la arena unos 30 a 40 metros e inician a cavar un hoyo donde después depositaran sus huevos. Una vez puesto los huevos, entre 90 a 100, cierran el hoyo o nido y lo apelmazan, luego regresan al mar. Todo el proceso dura aproximadamente 1 hora. No se permite el uso de luz blanca de ningun tipo de intensidad porque esto perturba a las tortugas. Solamente se permite luz roja y de ser posible solo una luz por grupo. La tortuga no debe ser tocada desde que sale de la playa hasta que inicia a depositar sus huevos. Cuando esta depositando puede ser tocada pero una persona a la ves y con aprobación de personal del MARENA que administra el refugio. Tampoco hay que colocarse frente a la tortuga en ningun momento del proceso, ya sea cuando sale del agua, pone los huevos o regresa al agua. Esto perturba a la tortuga y puede que no ponga los huevos o se pierda en su camino de regreso. 

Los huevos eclosionan entre 45 a 55 días después de ser puestos. Las tortugas pequeñas salen por la fuerza de la arena y se dirigen al mar inmediatamente. 

Esperamos puedan visitarnos en estos días ya que la arribada posiblemente termine entre el sabado y domingo por la noche.

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“A leatherback turtle has made a surprise return to a Malaysian beach after 32 years, a report said Friday, hailed as a ‘miracle’ by conservationists and renewing hopes for the endangered species.” Read more at Discovery News.

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Conservation begins and ends with education. Given the right tools to protect their environment, the next generation can give our world a cleaner, more sustainable future.

The importance of educating people, particularly children, has not gone overlooked by Paso Pacifico as we work to conserve natural resources and native wildlife species. In the past few weeks, Paso Pacifico launched its newest conservation and environmental education project. With generous support from the US Wildlife Service and the Private Reserve Network, we are taking steps to protect Neotropical Migratory Birds (NMB) and key habitats across private reserves located in the Paso del Istmo Corridor, Rivas Isthmus, Nicaragua. The area provides refuge to at least thirty-six NMB species of Conservation Concern and is an important land bridge for migrating swallows and raptors.

Paso Pacifico’s Nicaraguan Bird Coordinator and ornithologist Juana Isabel Matamoros has been hard at work providing training to over fifteen high school teachers who work at schools throughout the Paso del Istmo. U.S.-based ornithologist and science educator, Lynn Crew, recently joined Juana Isabelle to facilitate the new program. Together they are training teachers to educate their students about Neotropical Migratory Birds, partly in preparation for International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) and also in preparation for a long-term education program about native and migrating birds.

Paso Pacifico looks forward to the IMBD Celebration that will involve several local communities throughout the Paso del Istmo. It promises to be an exciting day both for Nicaraguan communities and for conservation on a large scale.

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Our friends at SeaTurtle.org remind us of the many resources they make available to people interested in studying and protecting sea turtles:

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We’ve already posted about the Changing Oceans special issue of Science, but we think it’s important to focus on how climate change is affecting marine wildlife habitat.

Marine ecosystems are centrally important to the biology of the planet, yet a comprehensive understanding of how anthropogenic climate change is affecting them has been poorly developed. Recent studies indicate that rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation. The impacts of anthropogenic climate change so far include decreased ocean productivity, altered food web dynamics, reduced abundance of habitat-forming species, shifting species distributions, and a greater incidence of disease. Although there is considerable uncertainty about the spatial and temporal details, climate change is clearly and fundamentally altering ocean ecosystems. Further change will continue to create enormous challenges and costs for societies worldwide, particularly those in developing countries.

Authors Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno acknowledge that “change has been the norm as Earth has swung through a variety of states in which life has prospered, dwindled, or experienced calamitous declines” as well as the fact that “long-term studies of climate change in the oceans are rare by comparison to those on land.” They go on to cite study after study indicating that there is plenty of evidence that change is rapid and driven, at least in part, by human activity. Changing ocean temperatures and composition mean changing currents and nutrient cycles.

Especially visible are the effects of climate change on “habitat-forming species such as corals, sea grass, mangroves, salt marsh grasses, and oysters.” When these species are at risk, so are the many species dependent on them. Of course, warmer oceans expands the potential habitat for some. We see warm-water species ranging from sea turtles to sea urchins expanding beyond their normal ranges, but the expansion of warm waters also means the expansion of marine-based diseases and parasites.

Over all, it’s important that the conservation community to continue its research as we try to understand more about our changing oceans. We remain committed to playing our role in contributing to scientific understanding. We also continue to take cutting-edge science to the field as we work to mitigate climate change and restore and conserve wildlife habitat from ridge to reef.

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Felicitaciones to our friends at Fauna & Flora International. Their Leatherback Conservation project was named Eco-Index Eco-Initiative of the Month:

Through this project, Fauna and Flora International (FFI) aims to contribute to the conservation of the critically endangered leatherback turtles on the three most important nesting beaches of Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast. This goal builds on FFI’s progress in beach monitoring and capacity building since 2002, and implements critical elements of the Pacific Marine Turtle Strategy in Nicaragua. In addition, FFI will extend its successful protection and monitoring programs at Juan Venado beach and Chacocente Wildlife Refuge to the newly discovered Salamina beach, which could potentially become Nicaragua’s most important leatherback marine turtle nesting beach, and central to ongoing efforts to conserve this species.

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