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Thanks to your support, endangered sea turtles in Nicaragua have been saved by our community rangers for over a decade. However, this year, the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting our work.
Poaching has increased markedly, as people who have lost jobs flock to the beaches to earn extra money from illegal turtle egg sales. Now, on any given night, accessible beaches can have dozens of men waiting for a turtle to come ashore so they can seize its nest. This new reality has been difficult for our team, but they are steadfast. In the words of one ranger, "If we leave the beaches, the poachers will take the territory and we might not be able to regain it."
To respond to this crisis, we have doubled down on our simple twofold strategy: help people and protect sea turtles. Through your support for our COVID-19 emergency fund, we have aided 270 vulnerable families with food packages over the past three months. At the same time, while many conservation groups have laid off workers, our fifteen sea turtle rangers are continuing at full strength with full wages. This is possible only through your donations. To ensure the rangers' safety, we have also increased their numbers at the highest-priority nesting beach while reducing patrols at less-used nesting beaches.
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Additionally, we have spruced up our sea turtle nurseries. Poachers know that when they find a nest from one of the three endangered turtle species—hawksbill, leatherback, and green—we will pay them an incentive to deliver it to our hatchery. Just this month, we received two critically endangered hawksbill nests from poachers for $15 each. This makes a difference.
This August marks our 15-year anniversary. It's incredible to realize that Paso Pacífico donors have helped save an average of 10,000 sea turtles per year. Now, we invite you to consider a gift of $15 or more in celebration of this occasion. Your gift could save a critically endangered sea turtle nest!
When you start giving monthly, you help ensure our impact can continue for another 15 years. Start the next 15 years with us today.
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Top baby turtle photo and and Paso Pacífico hatchery photo by Hal Brindley (Travel for Wildlife). The group photo of turtle rangers was taken in February 2020.
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2009: Karen the turtle, named to honor a gentle and generous donor, represents a huge advancement for hawksbill sea turtle research. Measuring a total of 68 cm (almost 27 inches), she was the first hawksbill ever to be equipped with a satellite tag on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. Her tagging occurred through our partnership with scientist Alex Gaos of the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative. Since then, this scientific collaboration has helped discover that the hawksbills that nest on the open beaches of southern Nicaragua belong to a distinct subpopulation at high risk of extinction. Thus, protection efforts are all the more needed. Help them continue with a gift today.
Photo: Paso Pacifico's board and staff pose during this historic event. Left to right: Rick Smith (who wrote this article about the occasion), Sandra Pearson, Rodolfo Dirzo, Sarah Otterstrom, Claudia Belli, and Liza González.
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Maura Antonia Martínez Pavón, or La Toñita, is one of our longest-serving rangers. Twelve years ago, she joined our award-winning Return to Forest reforestation project. She specialized in tree seed germination techniques and tree nursery management. From there, she started protecting sea turtles. She works at our Playa El Coco turtle nursery every day.
Toñita is proud of her 9 children, 28 grandchildren, and 5 great-grandchildren. When she was a young mother, she fed her family turtle eggs. Now, she is an outspoken advocate against hunting and poaching in her community. Toñita enjoys making a difference and rallies her town to participate every time Paso Pacífico holds community cleanups there.
We are deeply grateful to have La Toñita on our Paso Pacífico sea turtle ranger team.
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This month, our staff hand-delivered 200 safety shields made by STEMbassadors to rural clinics and public hospitals in the Paso del Istmo wildlife corridor. This Ventura, CA nonprofit group is led by middle school and high school volunteers who are honing their engineering and design skills for the greater good. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these students have labored overtime to manufacture PPE safety gear using open-source designs and 3D printers. The gear then goes to local and international health care workers.
Seeing the need for protective equipment in rural clinics in Nicaragua, we asked the program mentor, Alex Wulff, for assistance. The student engineers went to work. A generous local donor covered the shipping costs to Nicaragua, and our rangers delivered the shields.
We are inspired by and grateful to the STEMbassadors and their mentors and donors. Thank you!
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Give $15 for our 15th Anniversary of Saving Wildlife!
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(Act now . . . monthly donors will soon receive a special invitation!)
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Migratory birds are on the move! If you are in the United States, you can anticipate them passing by your location with this nifty migration forecast tool from BirdCast. Their website also has a live migration map that can give you a sense for how many birds were traveling through your area while you were sleeping.
The most important thing you can do right now for migrating birds is to turn off your outdoor lights at night. Migrating birds depend on the moon and stars to help them navigate their trip south.
Many people think of these birds as North American, but in reality many spend over half the year in the tropics. Some birds visit our monitoring stations year after year, such as wood thrush that has visited the Mono Bayo Reserve station each winter for the past 4 years. We are excited to welcome them back again.
In other bird news, donors like you made it possible for our affiliated biologists Nestor Herrera (El Salvador) and Marlon Sotelo (Nicaragua) to catch up on the latest conservation science by virtually attending the North American Ornithological Conference. Thank you.
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PARTNERS MAKE IT POSSIBLE
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Wildlife travel experts Hal Brindley and Cristina Garcia have debuted their quarantine project: New Plumage, a sustainable clothing company that caters to bird lovers. Paso Pacífico is honored to be one of the company's first partners. Each tee sold helps support our bird conservation initiatives, and we invite you to check them out today.
Many of you are familiar with Hal through his photography work with us. Twice, he has explored the many corners of the Paso del Istmo wildlife corridor. He took the photos of the turtle hatchling, turtle nursery, and magpie-jay in this newsletter. Thanks, Hal—we can't wait to have you back for more.
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Your estate plan could provide both tax savings for you and legacy support for wildlife and communities in Central America. Please contact Executive Director Dr. Sarah Otterstrom at sarah@pasopacifico.org with any questions.
Thank you to Hal Brindley, Adelayde Rivas, Alex Wulff, Matt Dolkas, Liza González, Rick Rutherford, and Paso Pacífico staff members Julio Collado and Sarah Otterstrom for contributing photos used in this month's newsletter.
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