This projects aims to protect and rescue 100% of the sea turtle nests of Playa Buenavista in Costa Rica, by building a hatchery in order to relocate and monitor nests. When the eggs hatch, babies can be released in a controlled environment and scientific data can be taken to study turtle nesting behaviour in this area. This will enable us to ensure a high survival rate of the endangered sea turtle.
Sea turtle eggs are still considered a delicacy in Costa Rica - and every nesting season the project is faced with the problem of poaching. Global warming is taking the sand to dangerously high temperatures, and eggs are struggling to gestate. Community members are concerned about the decline of the population of turtles, which brings eco tourism to the area. Also due to deforestation wild animals have lost foraging grounds, and have taken to consuming turtle eggs on the beaches.
Primarily the project will build a hatchery that can hold 450 nests. The sand needs to be cleaned of impurities - roots, insects, leaves, crabs etc and replaced, compacted and left to settle before relocating eggs. The hatchery will have a barrier to protect against animals and the tides, and will shade half the area so that half the eggs in a cooler nest will incubate more male turtles. Each nest will be monitored 24/7 and babies will be released safely when they hatch.
The long term effects will be a higher survival rate of the pacific populations of endangered sea turtles. With a hatchery we will reduce poaching and predations rates by 100 %. This will enable the community to benefit from Ecotourism, and for the project to collect more scientific data regarding nesting activities.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
