Species of the Day: Green Turtle

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of the Day is the Green Turtle.

The Green Turtle, Chelonia mydas, is listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM. This long-lived and highly migratory species is found in tropical and, to a lesser extent, sub-tropical waters throughout the globe. The Green Turtle has the most numerous and widely dispersed nesting sites of the seven turtle species.

Green Turtles are among the species who regularly nest along the Pacific coast of Nicaragua on the nesting beaches where our Turtle Rangers protect the turtles and their eggs until the hatchlings can make their way to the sea.

For more on this species, check out the IUCN Fact Sheet.

Central American Surf Championship

(Liza Gonzalez Director of Paso Pacifico in Nicaragua meeting with the Nicaraguan National Surf Team)


This year's Central American Surf Championship took place on November 19, 20, and 21 at Madera San Juan del Sur Beach in Nicaragua. Paso Pacifico partnered with Nicaragua's National Surf Team to promote the preservation of a healthy marine habit in Nicaragua's Paso Del Ismo. The event featured 80 of the best surfers in Central American fostering friendship between the nations and a collective awareness of the environmental challenges affecting their common coastline. President of the Nicaraguan Association of Surfing said of the championship event, "This year we want to send a message, along with Paso Pacifico, that the oceans are the life blood of the planet. We want to make a difference by appealing to the whole society to become conscience about the damage we do to nature when we throw trash into our streams and waterways".



(Nicaragua's Luis Chamorro)
Nicaragua's team placed second overall with Rex Calderon finishing first by a landslid in the open event and Jose Espinoza winning first in the longboard division.

Cooperative Forest Management

From this month's Science Roundup:

Sustainably managing common natural resources, such as fisheries, water, and forests, is essential for our long-term survival. Conventional analysis assumes that groups struggle to manage common natural resources because of free-riders and people who will maximize short-term self-benefits at the expense of long-term sustainability (the so-called "tragedy of the commons").  However, behavioral laboratory experiments have shown evidence that "conditional cooperation" -- individual cooperation contingent upon the cooperation of others -- can produce shared, long-term benefits.

Building on the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, the authors of a study published in this month's Science combined results from experimental economics labs and surveys of different groups of forest users in Ethiopia with biological assessments of forest health to conclude that "voluntary cooperation in commons management is not a pipe dream but an empirical fact."

Working on the ground in Nicaragua for over five years, we aren't surprised. Thanks to the combined efforts of hotel owners, large landowners, fishermen, partner NGOs, and more, we have seen watched endangered species returning to the dry tropical forests, mangroves, and waters of southwestern Nicaragua. While we work with local governments and MARENA (the Nicaraguan environmental ministry), our coalitions for conservation are voluntary, meaning these individual people and entities are making a choice to cooperate for the long-term benefits of local communities and ecosystems.

The authors warn that such cooperation is fragile, as people are likely to sacrifice short-term self-benefits for long-term sustainability only when they see others making the same sacrifice. Working for over five years to combine cutting edge research in both the natural and social sciences, we provide individual incentives for conservation with community empowerment to create a culture of conservation in Nicaragua.

Among the other factors Ostrom and Vollan suggest contribute to success in managing commons? "Evidence from field experiments shows that resource users responded prosocially to environmental appeals made by park rangers." Another reason to support Paso Pacifico by making a donation to our ranger program.

Trees Fight Pollution

ScienceNow has good news for those of us planting trees:

"Research shows that deciduous tree leaves, such as those from the maple, aspen, and poplar, suck up far more atmospheric pollutants than previously thought."

Getting Connected in Nicaragua

My first time to Nicaragua, I spent a week in an old pick-up truck we parked on a hill each night so we could jumpstart it each morning.

We traveled the Paso del Istmo biologicial corridor from one "unconnected" place to another. Along the fertile coasts and in the arid mountain forests, we saw (or heard) amazing wildlife, and met dedicated people who were excited to share everything they knew about the flora and fauna in the area they so lovingly watched over.

Farmers, fishermen, scientists, and schoolchildren took time to explain their people, their land, and the environmental impact of Paso Pacifico. Again and again, I found myself asking these people “are you a Paso Pacifico employee?”  While my traveling companion and passenger was a Paso Pacifico employee, most of people I met were contractors, collaborators, or volunteers. But they were so invested in Paso Pacifico's habitat restoration programs, they used the subject “we.”

In homes ranging from ocean-view villas with swimming pools and wireless internet, to small huts in the woods with no running water, no electricity, and no cell phone reception, people were committed to environmental conservation. Like everything else in that watershed, Paso Pacifico connects people in its mission to mitigate climate change and create migratory corridors for spider monkeys, yellow-naped parrots, sea turtles, and more.

Since 2005, Paso Pacifico has worked with landowners and local communities to promote ecosystem conservation. As a Nicaraguan mobile carrier works to increase coverage in extremely isolated areas, we seek new partners to help us create and repurpose mobile technology to facilitate citizen biodiversity monitoring, and provide scientists worldwide with hyperlocal field data, helping us better understand the migratory patterns of endangered species and restore precious habitat along Central America's Pacific slope.

Census of Marine Life

Earlier this month, the first ever Census of Marine Life was published, a culmination of a decade of research. Nearly three thousand scientists from around the world worked together to establish an oceanic baseline for future study.

The census includes over 240,000 marine species (presumed to be 25% of the total number of species in the worlds oceans) and has three points of focus:

1. diversity
2. distribution
3. abundance

"The census found life everywhere we looked," Ian Poiner, chairman of the scientific steering committee, told Science, " and it is much more complex and interconnected than we expected. Probably the other [key finding] is that we humans have had far more impact on the oceans than we had imagined."

We look forward to further studies from this bottom-up approach to conservation science and will continue to empower citizen scientists and advance our own understanding of the marine ecosystems in the region where we work.

Knowledge of Climate Change

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has just released the results of their study on Americans' knowledge of climate change.

Among the important findings are that, when it comes to climate change, many Americans "misunderstand the causes and therefore the solutions." Large majorities, however, correctly understand that planting trees and reducing tropical deforestation would reduce global warming if they were done worldwide. We hope this means that more people will support our efforts to mitigate climate change through reforestation efforts in Nicaragua.

The especially good news is that "Americans also recognize their own limited understanding. Only 1 in 10 say that they are 'very well informed' about climate change, and 75 percent say they would like to know more about the issue." As an organization dedicated to advancing scientific understanding, we are glad to know that people are eager to learn and understand.