For ten years, Earthwatch team members working with Drs. Frank Paladino (Indiana-Purdue University), James Spotila (Drexel University), and Richard Reina (Monash University) have made strides in conserving leatherback turtles nesting on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. Now their work has brought new hope for these endangered sea turtles in the form of Costa Rican legislation, expanding the national park that protects their most significant nesting beach here.
Dr. Paladino, principal investigator of Earthwatch's Costa Rican Sea Turtles project, announced the new law at Earthwatch Institute's Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, November 16, 2002. He reports that Costa Rican President Abel Pachecho, along with Carlos Manuel Rodriguez and Manuel Antonio Bolanos of the Ministry of Energy and the Environment, have enforced the new law by presidential decree until final passage in the Costa Rican Congress.
"This is the most important nesting colony of leatherbacks in the Pacific," said Paladino, referring to Parque Marino Las Baulas (Leatherback Marine Park). "Costa Rica has committed to expropriation of over 500 hectares of prime private lands along the coast to preserve the integrity of the national park from development."
The new law, submitted by the Guanacaste Diputada (congresswoman) Maria Lourdes Ocampo, expands and consolidates Parque Marino Las Baulas, designated in 1995 with the support of Earthwatch data. The expanded park will include additional lands adjacent to the beach and will provide a necessary green buffer between the beach and any human developments. The cost of the expansion is estimated at more than $15 million.
The Ministry of Energy and the Environment has also announced the rejection of development permit applications for hotels and housing units on this beach, which threatened the largest remaining nesting population of leatherbacks in the Pacific. This move was in response to more than 3,000 emails from Earthwatch team members and friends around the world, from Europe to Japan to Brazil, criticizing these developments. The Ministry vowed to do likewise on all other critical turtle nesting beaches in Costa Rica.
"Data collected by Earthwatch volunteers over the past ten years have demonstrated that these hotels and resort developments disturb the nesting turtles and destroy the dynamics of sand deposition needed to maintain the beach," said Paladino. "This action by the government of Costa Rica will ensure the protection of this beach and will be instrumental in the reproduction of this very endangered sea turtle."
Leatherback turtles are the largest, deepest diving and most widely ranging reptiles in the world and have existed in about the same form for more than 20 million years. They were "red-listed" as critically endangered by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) in 2001.
The Pacific population of endangered leatherback turtles has plummeted from an estimated 91,000 individual nesting females in 1980 to fewer than 1,500 females in 2002. This dramatic decline in 22 years is primarily due to loss of nesting beaches to development, unregulated harvesting of eggs for use as aphrodisiacs, and indiscriminate fishing practices that drown leatherbacks in gillnets or on longlines.
The Costa Rican law increasing the protection of nesting beaches will be a boon for leatherback populations. But mortality will remain unsustainable until long line and gill netting fisheries in leatherback migratory pathways are regulated.
"Costa Rica is setting an important example not only in the protection of this nesting beach but also by volunteering to serve as the home of the Secretariat for the Inter-American Convention to manage and conserve sea turtles," said Paladino. "This convention will establish international treaties to regulate the high seas and inshore fishing practices of over 15 countries in the Pacific."
In addition to continuing to monitor leatherback nesting success at Parque Marino Las Baulas, Earthwatch team members will use the latest satellite tracking technology to chart the movements of adult turtles after nesting and help determine migratory pathways.
For information on volunteering on Costa Rican Sea Turtle , click here.
Earthwatch Institute is an international nonprofit organization which supports scientific field research worldwide by offering members of the public unique opportunities to work alongside leading field scientists and researchers. The Institute's mission is to engage people worldwide in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment.