Paso Pacifico

Select language
MenuChange Language

Get Your Gift Matched for Macaws

by

Join the cyanoptera macaws’ fight for survival! Fewer than 20 of these birds are left in Nicaragua. Nesting season is coming, and their babies are hot on the black market. They need YOU to survive in the wild.

Until 9 p.m. Pacific time on September 18, 2020, your donation to our GlobalGiving campaign will be partially matched. Your gift will make it possible for us and our partners to save next year’s precious macaw babies and help their species continue. Please donate today.

Donors like you saved these cyanoptera macaw nestlings in 2017.

The Cyanoptera macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera) is an endangered scarlet macaw subspecies that is both breathtaking and nearly extinct. It has unusually long tail feathers and a unique wing coloration. Each year, wild macaw babies are stolen and sold into the illegal pet trade. Now, fewer than 20 of these birds remain in western Central America. The mating pairs are getting old. If no one protects their last babies, these macaws will soon be extinct. A new generation needs to grow up in the wild.

With your gift, we will directly protect the birds through nest monitoring, health checkups, and round-the-clock nest protection by our community rangers. The incentive payments we give to local people when macaws fledge their nests are another powerful tool. Our program also involves local children in our Junior Ranger environmental education curriculum. With the right luck and enough donations from people like you, all the baby macaws could be saved next spring! This would make a HUGE difference.

Each successful macaw nestling preserves unique genes and gives this species a lifeline. Our methods work: This trio of nest protection, economic benefit and education is a proven formula. With limited funding and no permanent field office, we have fought hard and already increased the macaws’ population by 20%. The nestlings in this picture are the some of the fruit of these efforts. Your help will make it possible to protect baby macaws next year. Please make a gift, and even start a monthly donation, today. Save these birds with us!

by

Seguimos trabajando con nuestros Juniors Rangers vía Internet desde la seguridad de sus respectivos hogares. Este mes hemos venido estudiando sobre las aves migratorias y residentes en Nicaragua y específicamente las aves que visitan nuestra comunidad. Desde el patio de cada hogar, cada Junior Ranger ha practicado las técnicas de observación de aves aprendida en talleres anteriores, ellos han podido identificar y realizar una lista con el nombre de aves que visitan los alrededores de sus patios.

Gracias al apoyo de los padres de familia hemos podido realizar estas actividades, a continuación les compartimos algunas fotografías de los Juniors Rangers y la tarea realizada.

English translation: Observing birds from my patio

We are continuing to work with our Junior Rangers via internet from the safety of their respective homes. This month, we have been studying migratory and resident birds in Nicaragua and specifically the birds that visit our community. From the patio of each home, each Junior Ranger has practiced the birdwatching techniques learned in previous workshops. They have been able to identify and make a list with the names of the birds that visit around their yards.

Thanks to the support of the parents, we have been able to carry out these activities. Below, we share some photographs of the Juniors Rangers and their work.

by

Ostional y todas las playas vecinas gozan el privilegio de ser visitadas todo el año por una de las especies más antiguas del planeta, tiernas y con tanto carisma. Lamentablemente día a día se enfrentan a grandes riesgos que la han puesto en peligro de extinción.

Hoy recordamos con mucha nostalgia momentos especiales que hemos compartido con nuestros Juniors Rangers en actividades que Paso Pacífico promueve con niños y niñas de nuestras comunidades, con el objetivo de formar en nuestros niños una cultura de amor y conservación por éstas bellas especies y por todo el medio ambiente en general.

English translation: World Sea Turtle Day

Ostional and all the neighboring beaches enjoy the privilege of being visited throughout the year by one of the oldest species on the planet, tender and with so much charisma. Unfortunately, day by day the sea turtle faces great risks that have put it in danger of extinction.

Today we remember with much nostalgia the special moments that we have shared with our Junior Rangers in activities that Paso Pacífico promotes with boys and girls from our communities, with the objective of forming in our children a culture of love and conservation for these beautiful species and for the environment in general.

by

In 2019, a yellow-naped amazon parrot worked hard to nest and hatch fledglings. She left briefly and came back to find that her nest was empty. A local Nicaraguan poacher had stolen her fledglings and sold them to someone in San Juan Del Sur as pets. Like many times before, the mother would lose her offspring and a poacher would be rewarded with money from the buyer. That’s how the story would have gone if it wasn’t for a worker at the non-profit organization Paso Pacifico. Marlon, the head of Paso Pacifico’s parrot conservation program, informed the police of the unlawful poaching. Marlon and the police confronted the buyer and got the parrots back. The next day, they put the yellow-naped parrots back into their mothers’ nest. Marlon and his team waited for the mother to come back. Eventually she returned and began feeding her fledglings.

Man poaches parrot fledglings to sell as pets.

Marlon’s efforts are so important because yellow-naped parrots have been on the IUCN endangered list since the end of 2017. Their population is decreasing in Central America at an alarming rate. The only place in which the population isn’t decreasing is in the Paso del Istmo in Nicaragua, where Paso Pacifico has been working on yellow-naped parrots since 2007. Since their work started, the yellow-naped parrot population in the Paso del Istmo has been increasing substantially.

Two yellow-naped amazon parrots receive health checkups.

To broaden its impact on Parrots, Paso Pacifico has expanded to El Salvador and is beginning to partner with Equipo Tora Carey in Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, Paso Pacifico will look at the migratory patterns of yellow-naped amazon parrots in the town of Los Jobos, which is just over the border of the parrots in the Paso del Istmo. This research will assist in further parrot conservation.

Paso Pacifico’s secret to success is getting community members involved. The first step is to educate people about the harm of buying parrots. In tight knit communities, the word spreads that parrots shouldn’t be purchased and the demand for parrots decreases. Another way Paso Pacifico gets the community involved is by rewarding community members each time they protect a fledgling that successfully leaves its nest. This technique proves effective in decreasing poaching and conserving yellow-naped parrots in the wild.

Community member sits with a rescued yellow-naped amazon parrot.

Poachers all over Central America continue to steal eggs from yellow-naped amazon nests. People like Marlon at Paso Pacifico work to protect them and take them off the IUCN endangered list. As Paso Pacifico continues to expand, the future looks up for the amazon parrots.

by

Many of you may know that La Flor Wildlife Refuge is globally recognized for its important Olive Ridley sea turtle nesting beach. However, the marine protected area of 20,000 acres (7875 ha) is of equal importance to marine biodiversity. The area provides valuable habitat for juvenile hawksbill sea turtles and overwintering humpback whales from both North and South America. Some of the highest diversity in soft corals and echinoderms are also found along Central America’s Eastern Pacific. Unfortunately, La Flor is one of just two marine protected areas on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast and despite its regulated status, little enforcement has occurred.

During the past year, Paso Pacifíco has had the pleasure of joining with Oceans 5 and Fauna and Flora International (FFI) in a program to develop sustainable fisheries management. We’ve facilitated meetings with over 60 local fishers, including members of the Ostional Women’s Oyster Cooperative, to discuss current fishing practices and the benefits of setting aside marine areas for conservation and marine spatial planning.

Men participate in a fisher committee meeting, 2017

These past 10 months, we have seen the fishers’ committee enforce fishing rules more effectively, even reporting illegal fishing activities. When an industrial trawler started fishing illegally inside La Flor Wildlife Refuge, this group reported the trawler and shut it down!

What we’re most impressed with is that this same group proposed a new marine protected area south of La Flor. This new marine reserve of nearly 47 kilometers contains important coral reef and humpback whale habitat. Protecting this life-filled area will restrict destructive fishing practices and benefit local communities through increased tourism opportunities like whale watching and snorkeling.

We look forward to supporting the fisher men and women on their conservation journey!

by

Nicaragua is losing one of its most iconic and colorful species – the Cyanoptera macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera). This subspecies of the scarlet macaw has a distinctive wing pattern and is critically endangered: by 2015, Nicaragua’s population had dwindled to a mere 14 birds!

So, with support from Loro Parque Fundación, the Brandywine Zoo, Projets Plus Action, and individual donors, Paso Pacifico has been working to rescue these macaws from the brink of extinction. Nicaragua’s last population is in the threatened dry tropical forests at Cosigüina in northern Nicaragua, so we focused on that area and the local villages of El Rosario and La Salvia.

In addition to monitoring the macaws in the field, we launched an educational program that taught 35 local children about the significance of the cyanoptera macaw and their habitat. The kids played games, painted, drew, saw videos, and even experienced theater through an official mascot—Macaito!

Macaito the Cyanoptera Macaw teaches children in the Cosiguina area

Macaito the Cyanoptera Macaw teaches children in the Cosiguina area

Macaito helped students to understand the importance of protecting his home and the surrounding forest. He told them about how hard life is for the macaws, telling stories of losing family to fires and poaching. Macaito is a lot of fun to work with, and with his help we hope to create a positive outlook on taking care of natural resources and the macaws. We look forward to continuing our work with the communities to protect the cyanoptera macaw and its habitat.

And guess what? Through our efforts, two macaw chicks have successfully fledged their nest. This is the first successful macaw nest documented in the area in over 20 years!

A healthy juvenile cyanoptera macaw

A healthy juvenile cyanoptera macaw

We are so excited! For more photos and details about this effort, we invite you to read our latest newsletter.

Your donations help us continue to protect the cyanoptera macaws!

by

We are thrilled to share a major breakthrough here on the blog! Recently we were awarded a significant grant from the IUCN-Netherlands, and that means we will be able to complete the purchase of a beautiful forest area in the heart of the Paso del Istmo. In honor of the critically endangered black-handed spider monkeys that live there, we’ve named this 120-acre property the Mono Bayo Reserve. This forest is an important building block for the wildlife corridor and also provides mature habitat for the threatened yellow-naped amazon parrot and other unique mammals such as the tayra and sloth.

With the purchase of this land, we aim to preserve and restore animal paths that damaged by deforestation. Our next step, with help from our supporters, will be to build basic reserve infrastructure and set camera traps to monitor spider monkeys on the land. Primate Conservation Inc, the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation, Prince Bernhard Nature Fund, Disney Conservation Fund and other partners will be joining this mission.

This new preserve would not have been possible without people like you! Individual donors helped make the initial good faith payment of $20,000 on the property. This matching support helped us to win the larger grant and use the money to save all of this habitat.

We could not be happier. All thanks to you!

Main Land Purchase Map

by

As you may know, Nicaragua went through a serious drought earlier this year. In fact, it’s the worst dry spell Nicaragua has experienced in over 30 years. The dry tropical forests in the Paso Del Istmo that we work in have been hit hard, and as a result many species are struggling to find the water that they need to survive. One such species is the Mantled howler monkey. The Mantled howlers have already suffered losses in the past due to deforestation in the area, and now their numbers are declining even faster, possibly as a result of the drought. Scientists believe that the massive number of dying monkeys may be related to a mosquito-borne pathogen, or perhaps a result of the monkeys having to turn to different, potentially toxic, food sources as their usual ones were scarce in the drought. Earlier this year, Paso Pacifico verified over 100 monkey deaths in the Paso Del Istmo Biological Corridor, which is an exceptionally high number in a relatively small area. Paso Pacifico has submitted an application to the Nicaraguan government requesting funding to research this issue, and we are working with primate specialists from UC Davis in hopes that we will understand what is causing this mass extermination of the monkeys.

After observing multiple sick and dying monkeys, we set up watering stations for the monkeys across the dry tropical forest with the help of our Junior Rangers in an effort to alleviate some of the hardships on the ecosystem that came with the drought. Inspired by our Junior Rangers’ initiative to help the monkeys, locals began an organization called Salvemos Los Monos de Rivas (Save the Monkeys of Rivas). Salvemos Los Monos has recruited hundreds of volunteers, who have done incredible work in Nicaragua. Salvemos Los Monos de Rivas regularly refills watering stations with fresh water as well as fruit. They have also begun a reforestation campaign in San Juan Del Sur, where they’ve already planted over 80 trees. We encourage you to join our efforts by donating to Paso Pacifico, or if you’re in the San Juan del Sur area, reach out to the Salvemos los Monos group.

Donate to our programs here.

by

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.

 

by

As a conservation biologist, one of the most important parts of my job is making trips to the field so that I can better design and manage the many scientific projects that Paso Pacífico’s local employees work on. Others imagine that I spend most of these trips walking up rivers to survey frogs, scrambling through jungle to follow monkeys, or capturing bats on the crater edge of and active volcano – and these are all things that I had the pleasure to do this past December! However, without a doubt the most important parts of these trips are not seeing plants and animals, but rather talking to the people who shape the landscapes where this unique biodiversity lives.

At Paso Pacifico, one of our core tenants is to partner with local communities to meet conservation goals together. Although it may take longer to meet a goal, it also means that we can be much more confident that our actions will have a long-term result, because local populations don’t just accept our actions – they help design them!

During my last trip, I worked to put this into practice by spending several days conversing with local ranchers to talk about jaguar conservation. As the forests have recovered and expanded in the Paso del Istmo, jaguars have started to recolonize the area; unfortunately, their return has led to conflicts with local farmers, since the large cats have started predating on people’s horses and cows. Potential solutions to the problems are diverse, but no one plan works everywhere – each location has different social and ecological factors interacting.

To develop a program to mitigate jaguar-rancher conflict, we began by surveying 50 local farmers on their livestock management practices, including 20 farmers who were affected by jaguar predation on livestock in 2014. We found a clear pattern – the smallest, poorest farmers were most vulnerable. Farmers who suffered losses of livestock to jaguars were far more likely to have smaller properties and herds, and far less likely to have infrastructure like corrals and fences.

At first glance, the obvious solution would be to tell people to construct fences and corrals – but such a superficial approach would overlook the financial and social contexts in which people live. Firstly, these poor farmers generally lack the capital to build fences. More importantly, even with fencing, many farmers would still let livestock roam in forests at times due to a lack of natural grass in the dry season.

In December 2015, I conducted a series of workshops with local farmers to present our results and discuss actions they thought would help prevent jaguar predation. Many farmers are enthusiastic about corrals and fences but need financial support for such improvements. By working hand-in-hand with these farmers, Paso Pacífico has a tremendous opportunity to improve the conservation value of pastures by promoting the establishment of living fencerows and adoption of eco-friendly silvopastoral systems that incorporate tree cover. Farmers also highlighted the importance of Paso Pacífico’s communication network in ranching communities to spread the word when jaguars are in the area and farmers need to take extra care to guard animals.

Although the arrival of jaguars in the Paso del Istmo initially brought conflict and fear, their effects led us to establish relationships with a host of new communities. Paso Pacífico’s partnerships with local ranchers will take several years to develop; however, helping farmers adopt sustainable, eco-friendly ranching will have a transformative effect not only for local wildlife, but also for local livelihoods.

By Kimberly Williams-Guillén, Ph.D.

Director of Conservation Science

Paso Pacífico

Consent Preferences