Training Communities in Sea Turtle Conservation
All seven species of sea turtles are listed by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) as either threatened or endangered. Protection of the turtles is often in the hands of small community groups, but these groups lack the capacity to put effective conservation into practice. Earthwatch Institute, the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST), and Nature Seekers, a local conservation group on Trinidad, recently joined forces to train community groups from seven Caribbean countries.
The workshop held in Trinidad in March 2007, called "A Short Course on Sea Turtle Biology, Management, and Conservation," provided tools to these groups for an enhanced sea turtle network around the Caribbean. The workshop was led by Dr. Scott Eckert, director of science for WIDECAST, and Dennis Sammy, manager of Nature Seekers, both principal investigators for the Trinidad's Leatherback Sea Turtles project. The workshop had a two part focus on biology and the "how-to's" of community conservation activities, such as monitoring and ecotourism.
Sixteen participants were all hand picked by the instructors to ensure a wide Caribbean representation of people involved in sea turtle conservation in their communities. They came from community organizations, governments, and non-profits in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Dominica, Costa Rica, Belize, the US, and Trinidad. The Belize contingent included participants from Earthwatch Regional Initiative partners TASTE and TIDE.
Workshop sessions included sea turtle evolution, morphology, and physiology, foraging ecology, and data collection. The participants also got hands-on practice on nighttime beach patrols where they learned how to properly place identification tags on turtles. In addition, WIDECAST distributed a tagging manual and database software for tracking the tagged turtles, as well as provided training on entering information into the database. This infrastructure was created for the entire Caribbean region to standardize and unify sea turtle monitoring.
Dennis Sammy, manager of Nature Seekers, shared methods, ideas, strategies, and resources with workshop participants. The goal was to help them either start or improve community conservation groups. This training provided a complete toolkit for community based organizations, from how to set up an organization, to how to do community outreach. It included information on what a live sea turtle is worth economically to a community versus a poached sea turtle.
"Nature Seekers gave an amazing example of how you can do great work starting from zero and involving the local communities," said Dr. Maddalena Bearzi, participant and president of the Ocean Conservation Society. "As a resident of an environmental non-profit organization, I often feel that many of our conservation efforts are meaningless, especially looking at the magnitude of the environmental problems we are facing today. This experience sent me home with some new ideas, insights and knowledge, new friends, and a little more hope for the future of our planet."
Earthwatch Institute is launching a Sea Turtle Initiative as part of its Sustainable Oceans priority area. One of the goals of the initiative is to conduct more workshops such as this one in Trinidad, to train 100 people over the next 5 years. Dr. Daniela Maldini, director of research at Earthwatch said she would like to work with Caribbean experts such as Dr. Eckert to replicate networks in other regions. Currently, working with the organizers and participants of the workshop, a sea turtle "toolkit" is being created for community groups worldwide.