by Michael Sabrio
Fall 2014 InGear

The Spring 2014 InGear newsletter introduced the turtle rangers of Paso Pacifico. The rangers patrol beaches in southwestern Nicaragua to try to protect the turtles that nest there. Through a happy collaboration of Paso Pacifico, the Turtle Conservancy, and Pedals for Progress, the rangers now use P4P bikes for commuting and patroling.

In February Gary Michel and I visited the Paso Pacifico rangers and got a first-hand look at what they do. The Paso Pacifico staff in California and Nicaragua were extremely helpful in arranging the logistics. (Thank you, Kate Dolkas!) Paso Pacifico driver Don Meyer Roderíguez picked Gary and me up in Rivas for the 35-mile ride to Ostional Beach, where we would meet the rangers. Claudia Perla, a Paso Pacifico forest ecologist, came along for part of the ride.

Besides their work with turtles, Paso Pacifico has projects on monkeys, reforestation, and “felinos grandes” (big cats) among others. (In 2010, a Paso Pacifico camera trap got photos of a couple of jaguars in areas where jaguars were thought to have been extinct for many years.)

About half our ride was on excellent paved roadway. We passed through the beautiful Pacific Ocean resort town of San Juan del Sur, then headed south on rough unpaved roads. We were there in the dry season, so we had only the bumps, ruts, potholes, and dust to deal with. We wondered how much worse it is in the rainy season and how far the rangers had to travel to get to their patrols. Claudia rode with us to a site near Ostional where she planned to spend a few days with a local family setting up a monitoring program to help determine food resources for spider monkeys. We said goodbye to Claudia and continued down the road to Ostional.

Coco Beach

We stopped at Coco Beach, where Paso Pacifico has one of its turtle hatcheries. A hatchery is a rectangle in the sand near the beach with wire fencing and a covered top to provide shade. Inside, individual plots of a few square feet are marked with the date the eggs were found and estimated date of hatching. Here at Coco Beach, there were no turtle eggs. A sign said that there was lodging and a restaurant here; if you want a vacation truly off the beaten path, this is the place for you.

Refugio del Flor

Our next stop was at Refugio del Flor, a national reserve famous for massive influx of Olive Ridley turtles. Nicaraguan soldiers were posted here when we visited. A board that shows counts of nesting turtles by month and by year has some big numbers – between 23,000 and 30,000 turtles from September through November of last year – but any relief you feel is tempered by very high mortality rates for newborn turtles – at least 90%.

Ostional

Our final destination was the beach at Ostional. Salvador Sánchez, the Paso Pacifico turtle coordinator (how’s that for a job title), lives right here with his family in a spectacular isolated spot on the beach. We met the rangers on duty that day: Daniel, Eliezer, Erick, Felix, Jairo, Jorlin, Marcos, and Salvador. They had their trusty P4P bikes. Gary and I mounted a couple more P4P bikes that Meyer had picked up from our long-time contacts in Rivas, the Santana family. We left these two extra bikes for the rangers at the end of our ride. Salvador, some of the other rangers, Gary, and I rode our bikes a few hundred yards south to another of the Paso Pacifico turtle hatcheries. Paydirt!

A batch of a few dozen turtles had just hatched that day. A Paso Pacifico employee was tending them, keeping them safe and healthy. They were to be released that night into the Ocean, which was a few dozen yards from the hatchery. Because of predation by gulls and other shoreline animals, the first few minutes of a turtle’s life – from the time they emerge from the nest, crawl across the beach, and plunge into the ocean – are hugely dangerous. The Paso Pacifico program saves the turtles from at least this threat.

We rode our bikes back to the beach at Ostional and took a boat ride to a nearby beach that is a popular turtle nesting site. One of the rangers dug up a nest where the turtles had recently hatched and counted several dozen eggshells plus 4 marble-sized eggs that had not developed. We hoped that the turtles hatched here had made it safely to the Ocean. Because the turtles come ashore at night, the rangers’ schedule must accommodate them. A couple of the guys on our ride were getting ready to start their 6pm to 6am shift. They explained that their jobs are sometimes routine and sometimes dangerous. Sometimes there is nothing to report. Rangers have no official authority to confront or stop poachers, who may be armed. The rangers rely mostly on their ties to and respect from the community. It also helps that Paso Pacifico pays compensation to local people who help with its conservation programs. People who find a turtle nest get money when they bring the eggs to a Paso Pacifico hatchery. Families who lose livestock to predation by the big cats and even people who can show evidence of the cats (such as cell-phone photos) are also paid.

Besides being incredibly interesting and beautiful, our trip gave us a better appreciation of how much a bicycle can help people do their jobs where transportation is unreliable and expensive. We also have a better appreciation of how hard it is to balance the preservation of ecosystems and rare animals with the day-to-day survival of very poor people.

Spring 2014 InGear

An enormous amount of our work here at P4P is based on reaching out to people and organizations for the support we need to keep our bike collections a success and our partners supplied with cycles and parts for maintenance and repair. When an organization initiates the contact, it tells us our efforts are working and we are making a difference. Most recently, it was Fumiji Aoki of the Turtle Conservancy offices in New York City who contacted David Schweidenback to arrange the collection and shipping of bicycles to rangers working for Paso Pacifico in southwestern Nicaragua. The difficulty in navigating the rough roads and changing terrain over long distances on foot or in the rarely available buses in this region make reliance on bicycles essential. P4P immediately got to work filling this need.

We reached out to Kate Dolkas, a conservation associate based in Paso Pacífico’s offices in Ventura California, to fill us in on who is going to be using the bikes and how they will fit into the overall mission of their organization: “Our ranger teams comprise 20 men and women, 12 Forest Rangers and 8 Sea Turtle Rangers. All Paso Pacífico rangers are local residents of southwestern Nicaragua and many of them work as farmers or 2-3 hours away in Managua in addition to their employment with us.

“The rangers work in the Paso del Istmo, a narrow isthmus of land in southwestern Nicaragua between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific ocean. This area is characterized as dry tropical forest where an intense rainy season is followed by extremely dry conditions every year. Rich in biodiversity and a crucial corridor for birds, mammals and amphibians, it has been devastated by extreme deforestation, resulting in habitat destruction and migratory corridor disruption. Tourism is also increasingly affecting beach areas.

“Our forest rangers hike through dense dry tropical forest to monitor sites for signs and sightings of spider monkeys, migratory birds and parrots, amphibians and small mammals. They collect and analyze population data to provide us with baseline information about each species and help us understand how to better protect them from deforestation and climate change.

“The sea turtle rangers are instrumental in protecting the declining sea turtle populations that rely on Nicaragua’s beaches year after year to lay their eggs. They are responsible for patrolling beaches that are prime nesting sites for Olive Ridley, Hawksbill, Leatherback, and Green sea turtles. Turtle egg poaching is a common illegal activity in Nicaragua, and the rangers help to combat against this practice by patrolling the beaches at night when turtles lay their eggs and by implementing our incentive program in which poachers receive money in exchange for the eggs they attempt to steal. Sea turtle rangers also care for nests in Paso Pacífico’s sea turtle hatcheries, where they record the number of eggs that successfully hatch and the baby sea turtles that then make it to sea.

“Having the bikes is so special because all of our rangers live and work in the rural communities of the Paso del Istmo and many of them do not own vehicles or bicycles, causing them to rely on unreliable buses for transportation. The long roads that take them from home to monitoring and patrolling sites are primarily dirt roads that become mud pits in the rainy season and then dry into deep ruts carved out by large trucks and livestock.

“Prior to the P4P bike donations, rangers traveled to monitoring sites on foot, trudging through the mud and dust. Now that they have the new bikes, they can focus their energy on what’s important: Protecting the wildlife of Nicaragua. Thanks to Pedals for Progress, life is easier for the rangers who can now do their jobs more effectively.”

This is the kind of partnership P4P hopes to continue to develop and sustain across the globe. As long as we keep up our efforts and can respond to the growing need internationally for economic and ecologically viable transportation and employment options, we know we are making the right kind of mark on the planet.