Sea Turtle Conservation & Environmental Education

Global Giving are generously offering a special Bonus Day on October 17, when they will match 30% of all donations made on that day. Please dig deep on October 17 to maximize the impact of your donation and help the community in Drake Bay to protect their sea turtles.

Around fifty years ago the beaches of Drake Bay would have welcomed four different species of nesting sea turtle: the mighty giant Leatherback, the beautiful Hawksbill, the majestic Pacific Green, and the rugged little Olive Ridley. After fifty years of intensive poaching of sea turtle eggs by the growing community of residents in Drake Bay, only the Olive Ridley survives in any significant numbers; and even though they thrive elsewhere in the East Pacific, the population in Drake Bay has been brought to the brink of extinction. Since the Sea Turtle Conservation Program began patrolling the beaches in 2006, however, egg poaching has been largely halted, offering a last minute chance for the sea turtle populations to recuperate. Will it be enough to save them from extinction in the area? Only time will tell.

After five years of patrolling the beaches of Drake Bay and Ganado, only one Hawksbill and a handful of Pacific Green turtles had been found on the remote Ganado Beach, and nothing except Olive Ridleys in Drake Bay. This all changed in 2011 when an unexpected gift with a mysterious teardrop-shaped shell crawled from the sea onto Drake Beach – a gregarious young Pacific Green turtle called ‘Talhula’. She became an instant celebrity. She was seen 14 times and left seven nests and was met by nearly everyone at the program, and a song about her was even performed by the local kids for the annual Turtle Festival of El Progreso. It was the first time a Pacific Green has been spotted on Drake Beach for at least ten years, and once she had left her final nest we sincerely thought that we would not see another of her kind until she returned to nest in a few years’ time.

Then, one morning in September 2012, the camp awoke to find a grinning patrol team still waiting in the hammocks to tell everyone the news that they had found a new, even bigger, even more beautiful Pacific Green nesting on Drake Beach the night before. This turtle, adopted by the school kids of Room 7, Sturt Street Community School in Adelaide, Australia, and named ‘Ricki’, was to be the celebrity turtle of 2012 – the turtle that everybody wanted to meet. She has already laid two nests, and we expect her to leave up to five more over the next two months J

Which each of Ricki’s eggs that is put into the hatchery to incubate, a more certain future for this species is in the area is nurtured, and it becomes even more important to protect Drake Beach as it re-emerges as a nesting site for the Pacific Green turtle – a much more seriously endangered species than the Olive Ridley. Unfortunately an egg poacher will not make this distinction and will not hesitate to deny these precious lives a chance to survive.

Please dig deep on October 17 to maximize the impact of your donation and help the community to protect their endangered sea turtles! However big or small, your donation will make a difference to the people and turtles of Drake Bay and help them to build a brighter future. Thank you for your kind generosity!

Links:

• www.facebook.com/playadraketortugas

The Corcovado Foundation Sea Turtle Conservation Program has never been busier. After six years without a place to permanently call home, in July 2012 volunteers and local staff were gifted a beautiful new camp in the village of El Progreso in Drake Bay – a blank canvass ready to be converted into vibrant base for the program, a home for the coordinators, and a hive of conservation activities. This was only made possible by generous donations made by local businesses, not-for-profit institutions from around the world, and concerned individuals like yourselves.

Throughout July and August, in addition to preparing the beach and building the field station for the 2012 nesting season, international volunteers worked around the clock constructing furniture, painting and decorating, planting trees and food, and organizing the logistics of the camp in order to bring online all of the new facilities and infrastructure. The camp, which used to be an old farm house, was refurbished and now features a dorm with a capacity of 12, bathrooms and showers, a kitchen, store room and bike station, and a multi-use rancho area equipped with a table, projector screen, book exchange and hammocks. Volunteers have also constructed a volleyball court, a scenic river trail, a community recycling station, and a hydroponic vegetable patch and composter.

On the beaches international volunteers have worked alongside members of the community association (ACOTPRO) to clean both Drake Beach and Ganado Beach (a beautiful wilderness sadly contaminated by thousands of plastic bottles washed up from the Pacific Ocean), and to prepare the hatchery and vigilance tower ready for the 2012 nesting season. The latter structure, known as the ‘chante’, was once again found to be heavily vandalized at the beginning of the season but was completely restored to a standard even higher than in previous seasons, thanks to a generous donation awarded to the program by Humane Society International. This grant also paid for new bikes in order for patrol teams to reach the beach, and new patrol equipment and dataloggers (digital thermometers) to monitor the temperature of nests on the beach and in the hatchery.

All of those involved in the program were rewarded with what has been the best season for turtle nesting since the program began. Despite a quiet start in July, the season suddenly burst into life and has since witnessed the most nests ever registered by the program in the month of August.

Unfortunately 2012 has also witnessed a big increase in the incidence of poaching, with local poachers being spotted on Drake Beach every night. Around 10% of nests have been lost so far this year to poachers, and the game of cat and mouse continues. From the beginning of September the program moves into a vulnerable period with the lowest number of international volunteers available and the greatest number of turtles nesting on the beaches. In order to deploy patrol teams onto the beaches every night and relocate turtle nests to the hatchery, the budget for local salaries is being drastically over-stretched. The cost to deploy the minimum number of local Patrol Leaders required for one night is $110. The program needs private donations more than ever at this moment to sustain this level of spending and maintain the struggle against illegal poaching.

Please dig deep and give whatever you can to the program this September, and help us to permit the survival of this endangered species in Drake Bay for future generations to enjoy.

The turtles thank you for your wonderful generosity!

Now you can donate with your mobile:

Donate by US Mobile Phone

Text GIVE 7861 to 80088 to donate $10 to Seaturtle Conservation and Environmental Education. Message and data rates may apply. Only works for US mobile phones.

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