One Turtle Saved

Fifteen years ago the hawksbill sea turtle in my hands would have been hog-tied, whisked hundreds of miles, slaughtered and carved into trinkets. 

Now, it swims free. 

On Baja’s Pacific coast, an adult male hawksbill sea turtle found its way into a fisherman’s net. In the past, for the fisherman anyway, such a thing would have been considered a stroke of good luck. The endless demand for turtle meat, eggs, skin and shell on the black market can provide a nice payday to anyone willing to endure the low-level risk of being caught. 

Hawksbill turtles, once common, are now the rarest of the rare due to decades of being hunted for their beautiful shells, which get carved into combs, broaches, and other adornments. 

These days, however, a Mexican grassroots conservation movement called GrupoTortuguero.org has challenged the old ways and shaken things up a bit. A network of thousands of fishermen, women and children count themselves among its ranks.

Among the fishermen working to save turtles, is Julio Solis, featured in this short film.


Julio Solis, A MoveShake Story from RED REEL on Vimeo.

Wallace J. Nichols, Brad Nahill, and the team at SEE Turtles and SEEtheWILD chronicle efforts to save endangered sea turtles in the inaugural issue of WildHope, their new online magazine.

Burt Talks to the Bees

Via the Sustainable Brands newsletter:

Burt’s Bees is collaborating with artists and experts at the Pollinator Partnership to generate greater public awareness about the importance of honeybees to agriculture and the threats they face.  

For such small, short-lived creatures, bees do a lot of heavy lifting to keep life on Earth in balance. In fact, an estimated one-third of the food on Earth depends on pollination by bees. Because they are instrumental to biodiversity, they are what scientists call indicator species, functioning as an alarm system for the health of ecosystems.  

... 

Nearly every scientist agrees that all bees need nesting habitats and a variety of healthy flower food to thrive - and they’re in short supply. Humans have used up all the land - we've planted crops from field edge-to-edge, lawns from yard to yard (no bee food there), and fancy ornamental plants where once scruffy natives used to stand. In most agricultural settings today, bees find only one kind of food for days and weeks on end, which is unhealthy (and perhaps boring) for the insects.  

...  

This June for National Pollinator Week, Burt’s Bees will premiere "Burt Talks to the Bees", a series of three short films created by Isabella Rossellini, actor, director and Burt impersonator. The films introduce the bees - the queen, the workers and the drones - in an effort to make viewers more sympathetic to their plight. 

The first in the video series introduces us to worker bees and how honey is made. The Sustainable Brands piece outlines many of the reasons we are active in advancing the scientific understanding of pollinators and reviving the tradition of meliponiculture.

Help Fight Fire with Fire

We echo the Nature Conservancy in saying that our hearts go out to those affected by the wildfires burning up the American West.

Just as we asked for your help raising money to plant trees in the wake of the fire at the La Flor Wildlife Refuge, the Nature Conservancy is asking for your help restoring forests to reduce the risk of megafires.

As the Nature Conservancy's newsletter points out, "a new study looking back 1,500 years found no evidence for the kind of 'megafires' we are experiencing today. These large, severe wildfires are a new modern reality."

What is to blame for the new reality?

Summarizing last year's big wildfires, the Nature Conservancy's Jon Schwedler explained that "changing temperatures have simultaneously dried out forests and extended the living season for bugs that weaken our trees."

Paso Pacifico founder and director, Sarah Otterstrom, has been studying fires and forests for over a decade. A fire ecologist with an emphasis on climate change, Otterstrom is among the scientists paying attention to the links between carbon emissions and extreme weather events. Otterstrom's studies and her commitment to protecting wildlife habitat and biodiversity, are why Paso Pacifico works to mitigate climate change through reforestation in Nicaragua.

Jaguar & Her Cub Spotted on Colombian Plantation

From NatGeo DailyNews:

Jaguars currently live in isolated populations scattered across North and South America, which is part of the reason the species is listed as "near threatened" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

...

Usually, just one jaguar cub survives in a litter, so seeing two cubs alive and well is "heartwarming," he said. (Take a big cats quiz.) 

It's "important to note" that the camera traps were located on the plantation border, next to a well-preserved forest.

View more pictures (courtesy of NatGeo and Panthera) here.

Rio +20

Our friends at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry present a peek inside the Rio +20 Earth Summit, from a unique perspective, that of one of their students:

"In  1992 I was one year old, I was learning to be a person, walk, talk, eat etc. I had no idea that there was an Earth summit or even a UN."

You can follow the adventure on her blog.

Panthera’s Camera Traps Capture Jaguars On Colombian Oil Plantations

From Red Orbit:

The first ever photographs of jaguars within an oil plantation in Colombia have just been released...

Panthera, the world’s leading wild cat conservation organization, focuses solely on the study and conservation of wild cats. The camera traps placed by Panthera in the Magdalena River valley were meant to gather information about the dangers of Colombia’s growing oil plantations on the jaguar populations. Panthera’s objective is to understand how the plantations affect the jaguar’s ability to move throughout its habitat, reproduce, and the effects on species that the jaguars prey on.

Birds, bats, and bugs

Today's 60-Second Science podcast from Scientific American:

Birds and Bats Downsized Bugs

Insect size tracked with atmospheric oxygen levels, until hungry birds and bats hit the scene.

In the day of the dinosaur, insects had wingspans of nearly two-and-a-half feet. So why are today’s bugs so puny? 

Photo courtesy of Bruce Taubert Wildlife Photography
http://www.brucetaubert.com/

Birds and bats!

Researchers at U.C. Santa Cruz have published their findings on the evolution of insect size in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Visit the Scientific American site for more.

Visit our website to learn more about Neotropical Migratory Birds in Central America, or to learn how our scientists are Valuing the Ecosystem Services of Bats.