Wildlife without Borders

From our January newsletter:

The endangered Black-handed Spider Monkey is locally extinct across most of western Nicaragua. Through a grant provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service International Affairs' Wildlife without Borders program, we have begun a monitoring program to document primate populations and to provide employment to local farmers to protect Spider Monkeys at key private reserves across the Paso del Istmo Biological Corridor.

Paso Pacífico will also be able to more effectively protect the Spider Monkey and other threatened wildlife thanks to a scholarship provided to our staff by the USFWS-International Programs, Wildlife Without Borders. This course is training our team in the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. These Standards teach us that our conservation efforts must include measurable objectives and employ strategies addressing the highest priority threats. This course is led by leading experts from the non-profit organization Foundations of Success. Paso Pacífico's is grateful to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for supporting our "conservation in practice".
If you don't receive our newsletter but would like to, you can sign up here: http://pasopacifico.org/e-newsletter.html

Protectors, Not Poachers

From our friend Greg Reitman at The Environmentalist:

One of the world’s greatest treasures, sea turtles, is threatened by extinction. With the continued rise of poverty and lack of food resources, egg poaching has become a mainstream commodity and a means for survival. This man-made epidemic has been on the rise for decades, and is most prominent along the beaches of Nicaragua’s Pacific Slope. Poachers, viewed like pirates, roam the coastline depleting sea turtle eggs to make a quick dollar. 

This year I had the opportunity to attend the Clinton Global Initiative where I learned of this epidemic by the non-profit organization, Paso Pacifico. Paso Pacifico’s mission is to restore and conserve the natural ecosystems of Central America’s Pacific slope by collaborating with landowners, local communities and involved organizations to promote ecosystem conservation.

Read the whole piece here.

Thanks, Greg!

Bats Lesson Three: Vampire Bats

From Kim Williams-Guillén, our director of conservation science:

There are other smaller caves in Masaya. Park rangers know where they are. I have been to only one, which was a cave with a large colony of vampire bats.  In the video (also from April 2009) if you look carefully you can see some females with babies hanging on their chests.  Many tropical bat species are capable of reproducing throughout the year, although many will have peak reproduction in the rainy season when fruits and insects are most abundant.  To my knowledge, these bats are found in the caves throughout the year. In the dry season, however, bats are easier to spot as they are attracted to pools of water where they come to drink.

Bats Lesson Two: Nectar Bats

From Kim Williams-Guillén, our director of conservation science:

This is a video I filmed of nectar bats feeding on a jicaro tree in Montibelli private reserve, which is about 30 minutes from Masaya.  This video was filmed in April 2009. It's easiest to watch nectar bats in the dry season (January through April) since that is when many of the tree species in the dry forest flower.

Bats Lesson One: Volcano Masaya

From Kim Williams-Guillén, our director of conservation science:

There are two main lava tube caves, and several smaller caves. The largest cave has a colony of what I believe may be thousands of bats, but we have not done any counts.  We have captured five species leaving this cave, Pteronotus parnelli, P. personatus, P. gymnonotus, and P. davyi. On one occasion I caught 3 Mormoops megalophylla which was the first time that species had been recorded in Nicaragua but I have not caught it since then, so I do not know if they were just there "by accident".  All of these bat species are insect eating bats.  It is hard to film in that cave, as it is very humid inside (camera lenses fog over) and the bats hide in branches of the cave that are difficult to access, but it is possible to film just inside of the mouth of the cave, or to film the bats emerging from the cave.  

The second cave, which is the cave that tourists can enter when with a park ranger, is much more pleasant and dry, but it has relatively few bats. I am not sure if the bats I saw in there were Carollia (fruit eating) or Glossophaga (nectar feeding) bats. There are many areas in and near Masaya where you can spot fruit and nectar feeding bats.

Vote ELLAS

We are finalists in NatGeo's Geotourism Challenge on Ashoka's Changemakers website. If we win this challenge, we will receive funding for our watershed and coastal restoration work from the National Geographic foundation, the Multilateral Investment Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The ELLAS Initiative up for a vote is centered around empowering female enviropreneurs to harness market forces and employ voluntary solutions to environmental programs in their local communities.

Please take a few moments to visit the Changemakers website and vote for our project. A couple minutes of your time could mean a healthier ecosystem and a healthier economy for the people of Rivas, Nicaragua.

Vote here: http://www.changemakers.com/node/96725?breadcrumb_type=finalists

Surfers Clean Up Their Ocean Playground

In December, we worked with our surf ambassadors to organize an environmental education workshop and coastal clean-up. We're really proud that Nicaragua's growing surf community has embraced a culture of conservation.

This project is made possible through funding from the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association's SIMA Environmental Fund.

Photos from the Field: Leatherback Nesting

Last night our turtle rangers spotted a Leatherback sea turtle nesting on Playa Brasilon. They watched over her while she deposited 78 eggs in a nest which they will guard.

Because the Pacific Leatherback is very close to extinction, we are happy to start the new with this, our very first leatherback nest on Brasilon Beach.

Cloud Feedback

From this weekend's Science Roundup:

One of the major uncertainties about global climate change is the effect of clouds, which cool the climate by reflecting incoming solar radiation back to space, but also warm the climate by trapping heat that might otherwise escape. So as the planet warms, will clouds change in ways that counter warming by greenhouse gases (a negative cloud feedback), or further amplify it (a positive cloud feedback)?
... 

Although the data only cover the past decade, and therefore represent short-term climate fluctuations, they do corroborate several leading global climate models that yield a similar feedback and an increase in global temperature of several degrees Celsius for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. 

The report is here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6010/1523.short