Today's guest post is from Wendy Purnell. Currently, she is the Director of Outreach at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. For six years, she worked with Paso Pacífico, learning everything she knows about sea turtles from their dedicated rangers.
Nicaragua’s Pacific coast is home to incredible biodiversity, including four species of critically endangered sea turtles. A member of the CITES convention, Nicaragua has banned the harvest of turtle eggs, imposing a strict sentence on those who break the law. In theory, sea turtles are protected from human interference. In reality, sea turtles in Nicaragua are threatened by regional demand for their eggs and meat, and international demand for their decorative shells.
During arribada season, when thousands of turtles come ashore to nest, armed Nicaraguan soldiers patrol mass nesting beaches. Despite the military presence, poachers make their way to the beach under cover of darkness. They gather eggs for sale on the local market where a single sea turtle nest (80-120 eggs, depending on the species) will fetch more than a month’s wages for subsistence farmers and fishermen. Given strong financial incentives to harvest eggs, and the government’s inability to enforce the law, sea turtle poaching remains a traditional way of life.
This doesn’t mean Nicaraguans don’t appreciate wildlife. If you grew up in Washington, you might find it difficult to imagine thousands of turtles coming ashore to nest in a single night. Similarly, it is difficult for Nicaraguans to imagine a world where sea turtles are scarce. In Seattle, it’s easy to say endangered species are priceless. In the second-most impoverished nation in the hemisphere, where children didn’t have enough to eat, it’s hard value the lives of sea turtles over a child’s next meal.
Dedicated to biodiversity conservation, Paso Pacífico, a non-government organization, is working to change the culture through community-based conservation. They employ a variety of market-based approaches, which vary from beach to beach.
The most successful of these is the turtle rangers program. Paso Pacífico trains individuals to monitor sea turtles for scientific research, patrol isolated nesting beaches, and conduct community outreach. Turtle rangers are also trained in conflict resolution. Rather than threatening would-be poachers with arrest, Paso Pacífico rangers tacitly acknowledge a traditional property right in sea turtle eggs by paying poachers to leave nests intact.
We may be morally opposed to placing a dollar amount on a living thing, but there is a market price for turtle eggs. Paso Pacífico’s rangers don’t carry guns, they simply pay more than local restaurants do. As conservationists, we don’t need to convince everyone sea turtle hatchlings are priceless. We just need to put our money where our mouth is.