An integral part of any conservation program is community involvement and their buy-in to the program. Since 1959, the Sea Turtle Conservancy has worked toward the conservation of the endangered sea turtles, and working to help the community to find sustainable ways to make a living without harming the turtles. In the past, residents of Tortuguero ate turtles and turtle eggs as a part of their daily diet. Today, though it is still a concern, a majority of the citizens have learned that instead of killing turtles for their meat, they are worth more alive by bringing in tourist dollars.
In an earlier post, I mentioned the population of Tortuguero is around 1,300 people. As many as 130,000 tourists visit the area each year. Forty thousand of those visitors purchase night tours to see turtles nesting. Tourism sustains the village, and the turtles are a huge driving force for tourism.
Part of my role as a research assistant is to provide environmental education to the children of the area, help with recycling programs, be involved with community functions, and to assist with the junior research assistant program which provides opportunities for local youth to participate with sea turtle conservation.
The first week we were in Tortuguero, we participated in a town and beach clean up where we picked up the trash in town and sorted out the recyclable materials. It was a blast getting to know local residents, especially the children. The little kids love climbing on tall people – I learned this first hand. I found it was easy to connect with the small children because you don’t need to learn their language in order to understand them.
After the clean up, they gave everyone a raffle ticket to be entered in to a drawing. I won a little plastic tool set which I gave to a little kid. They also gave us bagged water (picture below), which tasted like plastic. Not many people drank it, but instead used them as water guns to squirt everyone.
The bagged water we used as squirt guns.
The group waiting for their drawing prizes.
More recently, we played BINGO at the local school with everyone. It was a lot of fun. Although I didn’t win anything, it was a great chance to brush up on my Spanish numbers.
BINGO at the school.
Tortuguero Traveler 