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This past month, we celebrated Sea Turtle Week on the heels of World Oceans Day. It was a week to consider these animals' wonder and the importance of our work to protect them. Each day of the week, Paso Pacífico and other conservation organizations used social media to focus on one of the 7 species of sea turtles, paired with a human-caused threat that they face, such as climate change and entanglement in fishing gear.
In Nicaragua, Paso Pacífico community rangers protect several nesting beaches including the country's most frequented green sea turtle nesting beach on the Pacific. The green sea turtle (pictured above) in the Eastern Pacific is a distinct subspecies (Chelonia mydas agassizii) that is endangered. In Central America, blast-fishing and other unsustainable fishing methods are one of the major causes of its decline. Fortunately, the small-scale fisheries in the areas where we work do not use explosives.
Protecting nests from poachers is a key component of sea turtle recovery. This past season, our ranger team protected 250 nests from poachers of which 103 were green sea turtles (hatchlings pictured above). This past year, 10,328 sea turtle hatchlings were released! This achievement was made possible thanks to your support, especially those of you who stepped in last year to help us hire an additional three rangers and key partners such as the New England Biolabs Foundation, the Woodtiger Fund, the Kathryn McQuade Foundation, the USFWS Marine Turtle Conservation Fund, and SEEturtles.org.
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Alice Bruemmer has joined the Paso Pacífico team for the summer as a conservation intern. She is originally from Monterey, CA, and is a rising senior at the University of Notre Dame. She is studying Science-Business and is very passionate about ocean conservation, hoping to one day find a career in the field.
She spent the first half of her internship as a co-chair of World Oceans Day Ventura, planning the amazing celebration. She is very pleased with the outcome of the event, and has co-written an organization manual so it can be bigger and better next year. For the rest of her time here, she is working on exploring sustainable agriculture opportunities with which Paso Pacífico can get involved in the future.
Alice is inspired by the work that Paso Pacífico is doing, and is grateful to be spending her summer working for such an important organization in the beautiful beach town of Ventura.
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Paso Pacífico would like to express its profound gratitude to Silvia Figueroa, the founder and director of the Enrique Figueroa Lemus Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the social and ecological well-being of the Metapan region in northern El Salvador. Thanks to her support and that of the foundation, our first parrot conservation efforts in El Salvador were a success. The foundation provided financial and intellectual resources to ensure that three endangered yellow-naped amazon parrots could be well protected and successfully fledge a nest in Northern El Salvador. What is even more important is that the foundation leveraged its contacts to develop news and media stories to promote parrot conservation throughout the country. Silvia works round the clock on behalf of her community and is an inspiration to us all. Thank you, Silvia!
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Paso Pacífico organized Ventura’s first World Oceans Day celebration on June 7, and it was a huge success. The event took place at a local beach, and the sun came out just in time, giving us a beautiful, warm day to appreciate our coastline.
The event was full of activities that kept people engaged the whole time. We enjoyed music from reggae band Cali Conscious and Conner Muir of the Sea Keepers, and local nonprofits set up booths to spark interest in attendees about their projects and the importance of conservation. We estimate that 150 people attended, and have gotten nothing but positive reviews about the event.
The objective of the celebration was to spread awareness about Paso Pacífico as a local organization, as well as the need for ocean conservation and appreciation. We are delighted with how well these goals were met. We are excited to continue this new tradition of hosting World Oceans Day Ventura annually, and anticipate that it will only improve from here, growing each year with more participants, activities, and attendees.
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PARTNERS MAKE IT POSSIBLE
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For the past two years, we have worked with the American Bird Conservancy and the Southern Sierra Research Station to restore habitat for threatened migratory birds, including the southwest willow flycatcher. This partnership enabled us to organize small grants to Latin American partners, to conduct outreach to the public in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, and to organize symposia focused on wildfire restoration. This work was funded by the US Forest Service - Los Padres National Forest and the (NFWF) National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Wildfire Restoration Program.
Just recently, we co-organized a grantee forum for the many organizations and researchers working with the NFWF and the Los Padres National Forest to restore watersheds impacted by the Zaca and Piru fires. Over forty-five attendees listened to presentations on topics ranging from native fish restoration to plant community response to fire. It's been a great pleasure to participate in this project on California's Central Coast, where we are headquartered. Partnershps that support Central America's migratory birds generate benefits that transcend borders.
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