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Donors like you helped these intrepid women farm oysters that supported their families & the ocean. Thank you!
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CONSERVATION IN ACTION
Oysters keep the oceans healthy. They filter up to 50 gallons of ocean water a day and form banks with their shells, giving habitat and protection! Without them, seawater is more polluted, coasts erode more easily, and there is less habitat for sea life.
With your support and with generous funding from the PRBB Foundation, the women's oyster cooperative in the village of Pochote has made great strides. In the last three years, the women fishers have learned boating and swimming skills, strengthened their fishing cooperative through regular meetings and legal support, and improved their livelihoods through selling oysters and other products.
The women's oyster program has grown gradually through the years. Donors like you have been part of their journey, and so have foundations like the Waitt Foundation, the Loyal Bigelow and Jedediah Dewey Foundation, and more recently the PRBB Foundation. Our commitment to supporting these women remains strong. We couldn't be more grateful for our donors, and we know that the women fishers are thanking you too.
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Thank you for supporting women and the sea!
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Azalia Yuridia Morales Garcia leads the Pochote oyster cooperative. She grew up harvesting oysters on the rocky shores, but she has seen the species decline and so has enthusiastically embraced the long-term vision of an oyster farm.
In 2019, she was elected president of the cooperative, a position she currently holds. She presides over meetings and represents them to the government while also spearheading the cooperative's activities. On top of focusing on oyster conservation, Azalia teaches at Pochote's Tino Lopez Guerra School.
Azalia's leadership helps keep the women's oyster cooperative motivated and working together towards their goals. We are so thankful for Azalia's knowledge and leadership, and her immense dedication to helping women generate income while also conserving oyster populations for years to come.
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We send a special thanks to the leadership of the PRBB Foundation. Since 2018, they have supported Central American women, coasts, and communities. President Louise Davis leads the foundation, and board member Joth Davis has provided invaluable expertise and helped design an oyster larvae monitoring and collection plan that will help the women increase oyster production.
Last year, in addition to helping fund the women’s oyster cooperatives, the PRBB Foundation joined with donors like you in providing humanitarian relief to communities throughout the Paso del Istmo, Nicaragua. In addition, they sent school lunches and other humanitarian relief to northwestern Nicaragua, which is where the cyanoptera macaws live.
Thank you to the board of the PRBB Foundation for joining our donors in supporting Central American women, communities, and coasts!
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Thank you for your support!
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THANK YOU to the donors who raised over $1,000 to help save Cosigüina's cyanoptera macaws!
During GlobalGiving's "Little by Little" campaign, sixteen donors contributed $844, which gleaned $272 in matching funds. This helped our rangers continue to prepare for the macaws' nesting season. Thank you for answering the call at exactly the right time!
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Earlier this month, our executive director and conservation data manager attended the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France. After a year’s delay due to COVID-19, Paso Pacífico participated in historic votes about worldwide conservation priorities, issues like deep-sea mining, and increasing equity and inclusivity across IUCN's global conservation efforts. We also made new connections with people from across the world and found ways to improve the work you support.
On the Congress' second day, we dove into the Mediterranean Sea with dozens of other scientists and conservationists to both celebrate the ocean’s power to fight climate change and call on political leaders to take climate action by ending destructive fishing. Virginijus Sinkevičius, the current Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries at the European Commission, and big-wave surfing champion Maya Gabeira were both part of that event.
After the Congress, Paso Pacífico partnered with Mission Blue and more than 150 other organizations to officially petition the governments of Costa Rica and Ecuador through ads in several major newspapers. Our request to them is to protect sea turtles, sharks, and whales by creating the Cocos-Galápagos Swimway. This corridor between Cocos Island and the Galapagos would safeguard the biodiversity of those key World Heritage Sites, protect migratory marine species and expand current marine protected areas. Read more here: English | Spanish
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Thank you for everything you did to protect the ocean and marine life!
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PARTNERS MAKE IT POSSIBLE
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The IUCN National Committee of the Netherlands (IUCN NL) gave us the chance to present about the Mono Bayo Reserve at the World Conservation Congress. IUCN NL's Land Acquisition Fund helped Paso Pacífico purchase this property, which is a safe haven for endangered animals in the heart of Nicaragua’s Paso del Istmo wildlife corridor.
The Mono Bayo Reserve is also an important operations base for our rangers and various wildlife-supporting projects, such as reforestation, nurturing of native bees, endangered species protection, and monitoring of migrating birds. Junior Rangers often visit the reserve to learn about spider monkeys and to learn about the recovery of forests. Your donations helped sustain these important activities.
You can watch the presentation at this link. We are so grateful to partner with the IUCN NL’s Land Acquisition Fund and its sponsor, the Dutch National Postcode Lottery. They, and supporters like you, helped secure critical natural infrastructure to reconnect wildlife, lands, and people.
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Thank you to all the photographers who contributed photos used in this e-newsletter. These include but are not limited to Franklin Ruiz Morales, Vincent Romera, Julio Eleno Carmona Gonzales, and Paso Pacífico staff Anna Chévez, Yorlin Vargas Collado, Julio Collado, Sarah Otterstrom, Oswaldo Saballos, and Eliza Woolley. Whale photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash.
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