ELLAS Progress Report: Measurable Achievements

This month we're reflecting on our ELLAS program, and the commitment we made to the community at the Clinton Global Initiative

• Five women launched one sea turtle nursery which protected over 6500 sea turtle hatchlings and transformed the way their community interacts with turtles. 
• 2010 was the first time in 25 years turtles hatched on the community beach, after a quarter century of all nests routinely being poached.
• Native tree nurseries employ 20 women, who grow saplings, reforest watersheds, and plant trees which will offset over 70,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases.
• 200 girls regularly participate in environmental education programs to learn about the role of wildlife in forests and how their actions can protect migratory birds and endangered spider monkeys. 
• 500 youth, including girls, cleaned up beaches and watersheds, removing over ____ (units) of trash and improving the health and water quality of communities along 22 km of coastline. 
• Two organic gardens were established in two communities and are managed by ten women. 
• One eco-tourism company run by women secured a small business loan allowing it to expand its kayaking and guided nature hikes. 
• Two national news stories highlighting the role of women leaders developing eco-tourism destinations were featured in Nicaraguan media. 
• 35 households now use portable solar light, allowing women to safely carry out household work and support their children during evening studies. 
• One outdoor education and leadership program for early adolescent girls is ready for a September 2011 launch date.

ELLAS Progress Report: Challenges & Achievements

This month we're reflecting on our ELLAS program, and the commitment we made to the community at the Clinton Global Initiative.

Empowering Women Economically 
Throughout our existence, but this past year especially, we at Paso Pacifico have watched rural women in Central America's poorest country empower themselves economically through ecosystem services. We have watched women learn to lead tours and teach others about their region's biodiversity. We have watched them manage busy restaurants and other geo-tourism businesses. We have seen thecare and attentiveness with which they protect turtles and nurture seedlings. The joy of watching these women grow confident in their successful new endeavors is immeasurable.

Helping Women Find Their Voice 
One challenge remains, though, and that is to bring these women out of their shells. Because such a large measure of success is the extent to which environmental leaders are able to communicate the importance of their work and their goals, getting these quietly proud women to share their stores with a larger audience is key to our long-term success in the region. In a region where the rural population has struggled for so many years and where women, especially, have had a hard time finding their voice, this challenge is very real. 

Helping Girls Become Environmental Leaders 
Thanks to the fine examples these women are setting as role models benefitting the environment and their communities, however, we have great hope for the future. Building on the enthusiastic participation of young girls in our existing environmental educaiton programs, we are very excited to launch our new outdoor education program for adolescent girls. It is this generation of leaders we expect to continue the important work of mitigating the impact of rapid development and climate change while championing the efforts of themselves and of those who came before them.

Sea turtles, Sentiment and Moral Imagination

On Wednesday April 13th, the California Academy of Sciences and Sea Turtle Restoration Project will host the first (hopefully not the last) Science of Advocacy Session at the International Sea Turtle Society annual meeting.

We look forward to hearing from these promising speakers:

• Dr. Darren Schreiber (UC San Diego) will give us a primer on the intersection of neuroscience, public policy and behavior change.
• Dr. Lekelia Jenkins (University of Washington) will discuss Sea turtles, Sentiment and Moral Imagination.
• Conservation Photographer Neil Osborne will explore why (the right) picture (of a sea turtle) is worth a thousand words. 

Much of the discussion will draw on the findings of this paper:

Biology, Politics, and the Emerging Science of Human Nature
James H. Fowler* and Darren Schreiber
In the past 50 years, biologists have learned a tremendous amount about human brain function and its genetic basis. At the same time, political scientists have been intensively studying the effect of the social and institutional environment on mass political attitudes and behaviors. However, these separate fields of inquiry are subject to inherent limitations that may only be resolved through collaboration across disciplines. We describe recent advances and argue that biologists and political scientists must work together to advance a new science of human nature.  

PDF: http://dmschreiber.ucsd.edu/Publications/FowlerSchreiberScience2008.pdf

 We look forward to learning more at this event next week!

Bats and Shade Coffee

Kim Williams-Guillen, our director of conservation science, has been studying fragmented wildlife habitat and conservation corridors in the coffee-growing regions of Chiapas, Mexico. Like many others, she's been testing the theory that shade-grown coffee plantations help ensure greater biodiversity in neighboring forests than do traditional cultivation methods, where coffee is grown more intensively in deforested areas (they do). Unlike scientists who've measured biodiversity before her, Kim's focus has been on aerial insectivorous bats.

Using acoustic monitoring and live captures, Kim and co-author Ivette Perfecto have been measuring the feeding activity and biodiversity of bat populations in open and forested areas. Their findings suggest that shaded coffee plantations provide more valuable foraging habitat and that several species of bats commute through low-shade coffee monocultures. Providing valuable ecosystems services (as pollinators and pest controllers), bats are as important to managed habitats as managed habitats are to bats. Kim and her co-author conclude with a reminder that "multiple social, political, and ecological considerations influence which model best suits a region when planning the integration of agricultural areas into landscape-scale conservation plans."

You can read the paper she's just published here.

Leatherback hatchlings

Do you remember the Leatherback who nested at Brasilon Beach? We have watched as 38 of her eggs have hatched so far! We hope to count several more over the next day.

Doing Away With Disposable Plastics

We've just received a press release from our friend Wallace J. Nichols:

As ocean pollution experts meet in Hawaii, disturbing new report chronicles effects of decades of plastic pollution on sea turtles—and what we can do about it.
...

Experts on plastic pollution from around the world, determined to solve this growing problem, have gathered this week for the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, a mecca for green sea turtles.  

Now, in a recent editorial published in the Marine Turtle Newsletter, marine biologists Colette Wabnitz, PhD, of the University of British Columbia and Wallace "J." Nichols, PhD, of the California Academy of Sciences, lay out the entire disturbing history of plastics in the ocean, from the first scientific report to the latest surveys, to call attention to the concerns from 1972 to today. The report is grim, but provides a ray of hope in the form of proactive steps that can and should be undertaken to curtail overproduction and careless discard of single-use plastics.

The authors were careful to acknowledge that certain plastics have done much good in the world. The report firmly lays the blame at the feet of so-called "disposable" plastics: commonly used beer cups, water bottles and caps, grocery bags, plastic utensils, and so forth, intended to be used just once and thrown away. While these plastics are cheap and convenient, they are also durable and buoyant—making for a potent and deadly combination in the water.

Though plastics like these do break down from exposure to sunlight and other elements, the molecules of plastic never fully biodegrade—they just break into smaller and smaller pieces but never completely disappear. Eventually, many of these small particles get blown or washed into tributaries that feed rivers which flow to the ocean where plastics coalesce in ocean currents. Here they swirl in the eddying currents forming a sort of plastic soup where they float virtually forever and are often—the whole pieces and broken bits—ingested by the creatures of the sea. Once in the guts they can do great harm, or even kill, animals such as sea turtles.
...

"Sea turtle researchers and conservationists have a unique role to play in our cultural evolution away from plastic pollution, as we have watched the havoc the surge of plastic has caused first hand", notes Dr. Colette Wabnitz of the University of British Columbia.

"Sea turtle researchers from around the world have been submitting photos of interactions with plastic to the Image Library on Seaturtle.org. Given the amount of disposable plastic I see alongside the road everyday and the garbage my kids pick up whenever we go to the beach, the results are not surprising", added Dr. Michael Coyne, founder and director of SeaTurtle.org.

Learn more: http://www.seaturtle.org/plasticpollution/

Vampire Bats

Kim Williams-Guillén, our director of conservation science, has shared another gigapan image, this one from a vampire bat cave.

Click here to visit the Gigapan page and zoom in and out.