Safeguard habitat for wildlife in Central America!

Dear Friend,

Your generous support has made a difference for wildlife in Central America. I am writing to update you a three important impacts that you have made just in the last few months. 

1. The 13th World Surfing Reserve, Oriente Salvaje

Two years ago, the government of El Salvador declared the eastern region as Surf City II. This tourism branding is meant to promote investment and growth in surf tourism. This can do good by creating jobs, but if unplanned, aggressive development could take out the forested mountains, displace local people, destroy the habitat for endangered spider monkeys and parrots, and pollute the reefs. Already, over the last year, the first phase of a highway has dug up large trees, moved sand and rocks into coastal mangroves, and caused land speculation in the area.

After a four-year community effort, we successfully established a World Surfing Reserve in the eastern region of El Salvador. This status is granted to one site per year by the Save the Waves Coalition. We applied for this recognition alongside partner organizations ADETCO and Sociedad Salvaje Salvadorena. Our proposal was selected in late 2023, and we followed up by spending months communicating the conservation and sustainable tourism goals that this recognition entails.

On a rainy day, November 16th, 2024, the Oriente Salvaje World Surfing Reserve was dedicated. This 19 Km of coastline and its forests and waves will now be incorporated into a protected area management plan by the Ministry of Environment. And future development will also be influenced by a local stewardship council. Thanks to you, this special place now has a fighting chance. 

2. Critically endangered yellow-naped Amazon parrots flew their nests.

You have been the source of hope for baby parrots who successfully took flight out of their nests and into the forest with their family. Each season we work hard to monitor nests and to engage with communities to protect the critically endangered yellow-naped Amazon parrot. This past 2024 season was no exception. Although we lost several nests due to poaching and invasive bees, our persistence paid off. In Nicaragua, three farming families benefited from incentive payments; six nests were protected totalling 12 parrotlets. In El Salvador, our parrot program yielded two successful parrot fledglings and a new knowledge base about parrot nesting behavior near the freshwater Jocotal wetland. 

Your support last year made all the difference to our parrot conservation program in Nicaragua, which is in its fifteenth year, but its third year without any institutional funder backing the program. It is through people like you that we can sustain this protection preventing the extinction of a culturally and ecologically vital bird. Your support is also helping to provide jobs to local biologists and technicians and building a sense of pride in previously neglected communities in rural Usulutan, El Salvador. 

3. Lauching 3-year effort to restore a freshwater ecosystem 

You have helped us to begin efforts to restore a precious freshwater ecosystem in Eastern El Salvador. The Laguna Olomega is a freshwater lake formed in an ancient volcano crater. Not only does it host numerous endemic freshwater fish, migratory birds, and threatened crustaceans, it feeds hundreds of families through its fisheries. However, the system is in danger due to pollution from runoff and forest loss in the mountains surrounding the lake, forests that give spider monkeys a home. Even more concerning is that local fishing communities do not have reliable access to clean water and, in some cases, even latrines,

With your support, and for the well-being of the people and the health of the ecosystem and its wildlife, we have teamed up with Water Engineers for the Americas (WEFTA) to launch a program to restore drinking water to communities and to reduce pollution to the lake. Last month, WEFTA staff met up with our community rangers to survey freshwater springs and wells determine the basic infrastructure improvements needed. The focus of Paso Pacifico will be support WEFTA's team of engineers on the ground to help communities gain access to clean water. We will also provide workshops and other events to build awareness of good practices around small streams and creek management, the very aquatic systems that feed the wetland and support the well-being of communities and the habitat for wildlife. 

Waves, parrots, and freshwater. They all go together in the dry tropical forest landscapes of Central America's pacific coast. You make this possible, thank you!

Just a quick update from our programs in Central America. The "winter" months are busy ones with nesting parrots, a final pulse of nesting green sea turtles, Jr. Ranger graduation events, birding events, monitoring of willow flycatchers in wetland habitats, and the monitoring migratory birds at our two bird-banding stations.

Our community rangers and wildlife technicians continue twice-weekly monitoring of primate populations in Nicaragua, and in doing so, are helping to deter hunting. Forest mammals like agoutis help to disperse and germinate seeds and keep the forest ecosystem healthy. Your support for our monitoring work makes this possible.

In El Salvador, a community ranger climbs a steep mountain every week to check on the allusive primates that live in that forest, while a team of community community rangers share conversations in the community to promote the value of wildlife for tourism to their area. 

Your donations go directly to these activities and to protecting and managing small private reserves like the Mono Bayo Reserve in Nicaragua and El Salvador where we have recently placed a deposit on a 100 acre property that can serve as a conservation hub for education and forest restoration in the community. 

We look forward to the start of rainy season in the coming days when we will shift our focus to planting tree seedlings from our nursery and protecting sea turtle nest numbers that increase from June to October. 

Thank you for supporting Paso Pacifico!