Sea Turtle Conservation & Environmental Education

Dear Friends of the Corcovado Foundation,

It breaks my heart to write this letter, but due to circumstances beyond our control, we won’t be able to continue our sea turtle protection project in the Punta Mala --Playa Hermosa Wildlife Refuge. 

This wildlife refuge is a government-run protected area. When we first arrived there, 90% of all the nests were being destroyed by poaching, overpopulation of raccoons and coatis, and increasingly severe tides. 

We saw the urgent need to immediately help protect these nests. Amid the pandemic in 2020, we started working with the help of Costa Rican volunteers. We recruited many local people who helped us protect the sea turtles against all the threats mentioned above. Most had lost their jobs but nonetheless, embraced the project with love and enthusiasm. It was not easy, so we redirected any funding we could find to feed the volunteers, buy materials, and pay for the biologists. We believed it was essential work. And we still believe that today.

Last year, international volunteers began returning to the Osa and the project had more resources to work with. Our team was doing a great job, and volunteers were leaving happy and inspired. We also had a new administrator at the Wildlife Refuge. Over a relatively short time, we began to face unexpected challenges.

As we began coordinating the project for 2022, these challenges largely centered on the administration. We had several meetings on the project concerning the relationship with the park rangers, the repairs needed in the station, and several other requests from the administration, we had agreed to everything we could, as we knew the importance of protecting this nesting population. Unfortunately, the tone of the administration became aggressive, rude, and uncompromising. We made it clear that if we were no longer welcome or needed, we would withdraw, as we were no longer willing to expose our volunteers and team to an increasingly hostile environment.

Today, I received an e-mail from the administrator saying that he would be finding somebody else to help with the sea turtle conservation program. This broke my heart and the hearts of all our team members, especially those who had been working so hard on the turtle program. But we respect the decision. 

We are now informing local volunteers and volunteering organizations with the hope that they can be reassigned to other projects.  We are also actively investigating viable options with similar projects for volunteers to join. Additionally, we have donations collected from GlobalGiving, as well as materials, and equipment that we will donate to support other sea turtle projects.

Doing the good work to protect sea turtles on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts is central to the foundation’s purpose of protecting and restoring biodiversity on the Osa Peninsula and elsewhere in Costa Rica. We will continue to expand our programs, offer productive and positive work environments for our volunteers, and together, protect this most vulnerable group of Costa Rican citizens... sea turtle hatchlings.