Click here to read – Crontollership Court criticizes Minaet for poor of The Leatherback National Park (Spanish version only)
Article publish on Friday 5, 2010 by La Nación, a major newpaper in Costa Rica.
Olema, CA. Turtle Island Restoration Network announced this week that Randall Arauz, director of the Costa Rican environmental organization PRETOMA, and Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, of Davenport, CA, have joined the organization’s board of directors.
Turtle Island Restoration Network is a nonprofit environmental organization that sponsors initiatives including the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, the Salmon Protection and Watershed Network and the Got Mercury Campaign.
“I am very happy to welcome Randall Arauz and Dr. Wallace J. Nichols to the Turtle Island board. They are leaders in the worldwide efforts to study and protect sea turtles and other marine wildlife and their dedication and persistence is inspiring. Our board and staff are excited to engage J. and Randall in our expanding organization and community,” said Todd Steiner, founder and executive director of Turtle Island and its initiatives.
Biologist and activist Randall Arauz was born in Los Angeles, California. Raised by the seaside, he developed a passion for the ocean. At the age of 10, he returned with his parents to their native home in Costa Rica where he developed a deep affinity with the marine natural history of the country. After receiving a degree in Biology at the University of Costa Rica, he served as the first director of the Las Baulas National Park of Costa Rica, established to protect the region’s endangered leatherback turtles.
From a base in San Jose, Costa Rica, Arauz began leading Turtle Island’s efforts in Central America in 1994. He worked with Turtle Island director Todd Steiner to establish the first nesting beach protection programs that engaged travelers in protecting sea turtles and provided local communities economic alternatives to egg harvesting. Today, the program protects 70,000 sea turtle eggs each year at five critical nesting beaches in Costa Rica.
Advocacy for protections for sea turtles and other marine species was a natural outgrowth of the hands-on protection program. In 1997, Randall founded PRETOMA (an acronym for “Sea Turtle Restoration Project” in Spanish), a non-governmental organization focused on protecting Costa Rica’s sea turtles, sharks, and other marine species and their coastal and ocean habitats through advocacy and grassroots campaigns.
In 2003, PRETOMA secretly captured footage of a Taiwanese fishing vessel landing 30 tons of hacked-off shark fins at a private dock in the Costa Rican port of Puntarenas. Approximately 30,000 sharks were killed to fill the ship’s hull. The footage horrified both Costa Ricans and the international community and helped galvanize PRETOMA’s campaign for better enforcement of the nation’s laws against shark finning.
Randall won the United Kingdom’s most presitigious international environmental award in 2004, the Whitley Fund For Nature Award, in recognition of the importance of his work. He has served as a technical advisor to the Costa Rican Ministry of Natural Resources and Foreign Affairs at important forums such as the United Nations Law of the Sea, and the Convention for Migratory Species.. He currently serves in both the the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and the IUCN Sea Turtle Specialist Group.
“Working with Turtle Island Restoration Network and Todd Steiner really enabled me to become an effective advocate for marine species, rather than just a biologist,” said Randall Arauz. “Todd Steiner has supported my work and helped me move Costa Rica towards upholding its environmental image. I am pleased to join the board of Turtle Island and support this organization’s future.”
Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, known as “J”, has founded marine protection organizations including Grupo Tortuguero, dedicated to restoring Pacific sea turtles, WILDCOAST to protect coastal wilderness and Ocean Revolution, working to inspire the next generation of ocean conservation leaders. Recently, he co-founded SEEturtles.Org which engages people in conservation by helping them view sea turtles and other species in the wild. J. holds a PhD from the University of Arizona, degrees from Duke and Depaugh Universities and was granted a Fulbright Fellowship.
Dr. Nichols also currently works with several universities and organizations to advance ocean protection, including California Academy of Sciences as a Research Associate. His efforts have been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American, Time, Newsweek and other international media.
“I feel like I’ve undertaken the task of engaging communities of many different kinds in sea turtle and marine conservation. Turtle Island’s work has been an inspiration to me and I look forward to being a part of the organization’s work to reach new communities and mobilize them as well,” says Dr. Nichols. His work has taken him from coastal villages in Mexico where he works to demonstrate the value of saving sea turtles to artisanal fishermen, to Hollywood, where he worked with Leonardo DiCaprio on the environmental documentary, The 11th Hour.
Turtle Island Restoration Network is a tax-exempt organization with a mission to take swift and decisive action to protect and restore marine and aquatic species and their habitats, and to inspire people in communities all over the world to join us as active and vocal advocates.
The organization’s oldest and largest initiative, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project (www.seaturtles.org), was founded in 1989 to protect sea turtles and their ocean habitat globally. The Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (www.spawnusa.org), founded in 1997, protects California’s largest remaining run of wild, endangered coho salmon in the Lagunitas Creek Watershed. The organization’s Got Mercury Campaign (www.gotmercury.org), founded in 2002, informs people about the personal impacts of ocean pollution, and mercury in seafood in particular. Turtle Island has received the highest four-star rating for financial effectiveness for five years in a row from CharityNavigator.Com.
Watch the video from the Leatherback Survival Concert, an initiative to save the leatherback sea turtle and Costa Rica’s National Parks on December 14 in San José.
Officials from the Ministry of the Environment and Telecommunications (MINAET), along with representatives from Costa Rican NGOs Pretoma, the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, and Widecast, confiscated illegal jewelry made from endangered hawksbill sea turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) shells for sale at the Christmas festival in Guadalupe. MINAET officials in street clothes and NGO members walked through the various temporary craft shops that line the barrio’s central park this holiday season, confirming that hawksbill rings and bracelets were for sale. After the shops were pinpointed, uniformed officials moved in and confiscated over 300 illegal hawksbill rings and several bracelets. A judge will rule on the individual cases and the jewelry will more than likely be destroyed. Watch the video.
A panel of six experts convened at the University of Costa Rica in front of an audience of over 70 students, conservationists, and academics, to present their different points of view regarding development and conservation issues that surround the future of Las Baulas National Park in Guanacaste. Passionate arguments were offered for and against bill 17.383 which proposes to demote the park to a Wildlife Refuge. Also in attendance were local community members whose future will be affected one way or another from the outcome. While nothing was decided, it became clear that a greater dialogue was needed between long term property owners, investors, neighboring communities, grass roots organizations, national conservation organizations, and government officers to save the leatherback sea turtles of Las Baulas.
Members at the main table were (left to right):
Randal Arauz (Pretoma); Didiher Chacon (Widecast); Laura Jaen (Association of Local Guides of Matapalo); Mario Arias (University of Costa Rica); Vianney Saborio (Lawyer for property owners); Manfred Marshall (local property owner).
On December 2nd, members of Pretoma appeared at an Oral and Private Hearing before Incopesca’s Direction of Judicial Fisheries Procedures, to refer to a suit filed by them against the shrimp trawler “Luis Guillermo”, which was caught on video operating illegally in the protected waters of the Caletas-Ario National Wildlife Refuge, during the night of last April 17, 2009 (watch video). Prior to the hearing, the defense lawyer’s request for the process be “definitely revoked”, was duly rejected. A final resolution by the Direction is expected during the next few months. Read submitted law suit (Spanish only).
“As Presidents of the six small-scale artisanal fishing associations which gather 186 fishermen, we hereby state and emphasize that we support the creation of the Marine Area for Responsible Fishing and we request an explanation and a clarification of the false declarations published in this magazine on November 27th 2009.
In regards with the information which has circulated after the press release disclosed by Pretoma and a group of commercial fishermen who do not practice artisan fishing activities, it is important to clarify that Mr. Victor Rocha in this opportunity acted on behalf of the Civic Front of Golfito’s Fishing Sector, group to which we do not belong since we are small-scale artisan fishermen.”
Read full press release
Costa Rica’s National University (UNA) has been forceful in expressing its firm rejection of bill 17.383 that would downgrade Leatherback National Park to a mixed wildlife refuge.
The document SCU-2165-2009, signed by the university’s board of directors and submitted to the Legislative Assembly, recomends the bill be rejected on the grounds that the proposed changes to the national park are not based on any scientific evidence.
(Article is only available in Spanish)
I left San Jose at 7 am…
…11 hours later the beaten down bus lumbered to its final stop in the one block town of Punta Banco. Just beyond the town the dirt road dead ends in the lush green folds of Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast, making it impossible to travel any further by vehicle.
From Punta Banco it’s a 2 hour hike south (4 hours if you forget the video camera and have to go back for it) along a deserted beach to reach the proposed site of a tuna farm aquaculture project. The proposal has the community up in arms and ready to fight off anyone or anything that threatens their quiet way of life.
Watch this documentary of my trip from the congested San Jose streets to the mouth of Costa Rica’s Golfo Dulce and learn why there’s a fight brewing in paradise.
The proposal sent by the Executive Branch to modify the Leatherback National Park’s limits and downgrade its category to a mixed refuge has met yet another obstacle. This time it comes in the form of the General Controllership’s report stating that there is a general lack of technic justification needed to convert a national park to a refuge. Source: Diario Extra (Costa Rica).
Read the full article (spanish only)
Shark finning regulations were strengthened by new permit controls announced today by Fisheries Minister Huw Irranca-Davies.
Special fishing permits for English, Welsh and Northern Irish registered fishing boats allowing the removal of shark fins at sea are to be stopped. Scotland will simultaneously be announcing plans to cease issuing permits to their fleet. Any sharks caught by UK registered vessels will now have to be landed with the fin attached. Source: Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra, UK).
Rodrigo Cabezas, a doctor from Alajuela made the journey to the United Nations in New York last week to protest Costa Rican Presidents Óscar Arias’ conflicting national and international environmental politics. While there he unveiled a banner that read, “President Arias: Do in your own country what you preach to the world”. The news appeared in La Nación (Spanish version only).
The Miniatry of Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs(MARM) will prohibit the capture of thresher sharks and scalloped hammerhead sharks – by means of a Ministerial Order set to enter into force 1 January 2010 – in an effort to protect both vulnerable species.
According to the regulation, Spanish fishing vessels will be not be allowed to catch, land, offload, or commercialize these sharks throughout their entire fishing grounds (Source: FIS).
“We want to congratulate the Spanish Government for acknowledging the precarious state of these species of sharks, overfished to depletion by industrial fisheries, and enacting regulations that will have direct and immediate benefit for these endangered species”, said Randall Arauz, of the Costa Rican organization Pretoma. “These regulations, however, must be global in scope, as these particular species of sharks are highly migratory”, added Arauz.
“Pretoma also calls on the Costa Rican government to continue leading political processes in global fisheries management forums, by proposing the inclusion of hammerhead sharks in Appendix II of the Convention for International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES)”, said Miguel Gómez, Shark Campaign Coordinator of Pretoma. “Costa Rica is a natural leader for this cause, as the country has already gained the respect of the international community for its work promoting shark conservation policy in the United Nations Informal Consultative Process on the Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS), the Convention for Migratory Species (CMS), and the Conference of Fisheries (COFI) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), stated Gómez.
The government of Costa Rica is currently studying the possibility of officially proposing hammerhead sharks in Appendix II of CITES, during the next conference to be held in Doha, Quatar, March 2010.
Global populations of scalloped hammer heads (Sphyrna lewini) have been drastically reduced in recent years, up to 95% in some ocean basins, due to overfishing. As a result, the species was recently classified as Endangered, by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. A listing in Appendix II of CITES would promote better control of products derived from hammerhead sharks, a business that is highlighted by the Asian shark fin soup market.
Costa Rica’s President Óscar Arias’ spoke at the United Nations in New York on September 22, 2009 regarding global climate change. The title of his speech was, “It’s Cheaper to Save the Planet than it is to Destroy it”.
Óscar Arias, Costa Rica's President
Opinions vary over Arias’ politics; however it’s undeniable that we all must play a proactive role in finding a solution to global warming.
The speech is posted in English and Spanish on the Costa Rican Conservation Network’s Blog for all to critique!! Please do – we’re interested to hear your thoughts.
Pretoma’s president Randall Arauz has already weighed in with his opinion. Listen to his radio interview.
In addition, La Nación, Costa Rica’s largest newspaper, printed the comments of Grettel Ortiz, a Citizen’s Action Party (PAC) diplomat.
