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The InvestEGGator works!

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By placing 3D-printed and GPS-enabled decoy sea turtle eggs into nests on the beach, it’s possible to gather key evidence needed to expose rampant illegal trade of the eggs, suggests a study publishing in the journal Current Biology on October 5. The researchers specifically tested how well the decoy eggs work and their safety for the endangered turtles.

“Our research showed that placing a decoy into a turtle nest did not damage the incubating embryos and that the decoys work,” says lead author Helen Pheasey (@HelenPheasey) of the University of Kent. “We showed that it was possible to track illegally removed eggs from beach to end consumer as shown by our longest track, which identified the entire trade chain covering 137 kilometers.”

The egg decoys, dubbed InvestEggator, were developed by the conservation organization Paso Pacífico to address the illegal trade of endangered sea turtles in Central America, where the eggs are smuggled from beaches and sold to restaurants and bars as a delicacy. Paso Pacífico-affiliated scientist Kim Williams-Guillén conceived and designed the decoys in response to a call for proposals from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge. They were looking for projects using technological advances to fight wildlife poaching.

“The idea was kind of an ‘Aha’ moment,” Williams-Guillén says.

It immediately brought to mind two of her favorite TV shows, Breaking Bad and The Wire, which both happened to deal with illegal drug trafficking. “In Breaking Bad, the DEA places a GPS tracking device on a tank of chemicals to see who receives the chemicals,” she said. “In one episode of the Wire, two police officers plant an audio device in a tennis ball to surreptitiously record a suspected drug dealer. Turtle eggs basically look like ping pong balls, and we wanted to know where they were going—put those two ideas together and you have the InvestEGGator.”

To see how well they’d work in practice, Pheasey and her colleagues put the 3D-printed decoys in 101 turtle nests on four beaches in Costa Rica. A quarter of the fake eggs were taken illegally from the nests, allowing the researchers to track eggs from five clutches, including two green turtle nests and three olive ridley nests.

One of the decoys made it close to a residential property before going silent. Another went two kilometers to a bar. The one that went farthest ended up 137 kilometers inland, spending two days in transit from the beach to a supermarket loading-bay and then on to a residential property. The researchers assume the egg wasn’t sold at the market but was rather handed off there, from a trafficker to a salesperson.

They also got some anecdotal reports of cases where someone discovered the decoy. “One decoy went off-line in a residential area near Cariari, a town 43 km from the deployment beach,” they wrote. “After 11 days, we received photographs, sent from Cariari, of the dissected egg.”

Along with the photos, they got information about where the egg was purchased and how many eggs had been exchanged. The findings show that the decoy eggs already are yielding intelligence from the local community in addition to tracking data, they note.

Pheasey says that the early evidence shows that the majority of stolen eggs don’t leave the local area. The finding reaffirmed their suspicions, as well as some local reports that most of the trade takes place close to the nesting beach. “Knowing that a high proportion of eggs remain in the local area helps us target our conservation efforts,” Pheasey says. “We can now focus our efforts on raising awareness in the local communities and direct law enforcement to this local issue. It also means we know where the consumers are, which assists us in focusing demand reduction campaigns.”

Pheasey says that the key thing isn’t to find the people who take the eggs from the beach. To a large extent, that’s already known. From a law enforcement perspective, the critical thing is to identify those who are trafficking and selling the eggs, often door to door. “As trafficking is a more serious crime, those handover points are far more valuable from a law enforcement perspective than catching someone taking a nest,” Pheasey says.

That’s what makes the InvestEGGator such an important tool, according to Williams-Guillen. “But,” she adds, “it really must be used in the context of a multi-pronged conservation approach that uses education, building better economic opportunities, and enforcement to help fight sea turtle egg poaching.”

The researchers say they’d like to see more sea turtle projects use the decoys on their nesting beaches. Such efforts could shed light on differences in the turtle egg trade in different countries. In addition to continuing to improve the technology and its deployment, they’re also interested in expanding the technology to other species—for example, Paso Pacifico plans to work with Costa Rican scientists to adapt the transmitter for use in tracking shipments of shark fins. They are also considering its use in tracking the theft of eggs from parrot nests.

 

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This work was supported by USAID Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge and supporters of Turtle Tracks.
Current Biology, Pheasey et al.: “Using GPS enabled decoy turtle eggs to track illegal trade” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)31255-0 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.065

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Author Contacts:

Helen Pheasey
University of Kent
helenpheasey@gmail.com

Media Contacts:

Carly Britton
Press Office
Cell Press
+1 (617) 417-7053 | press@cell.com

Olivia Miller
University of Kent
o.miller@kent.ac.uk

Sarah Otterstrom
Executive Director
Paso Pacifico
sarah@pasopacifico.org

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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

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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.

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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.

 

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