Hawaii

Sea turtle conservation and research
Squeaky IX
Environmental education
Hawaii protected area
Finca El Salado
Alianzas

   

Hawaii Park

(No, this isn't part of the Hawaiian Islands! It’s called Hawaii because when the founding father of this Pacific coast town first arrived 50 years ago, he had seen a postcard of the island of Hawaii and thought he saw some similarities.)

Guatemala's Pacific coast stretches 250 kms between Mexico and El Salvador and is made up of volcanic plains on which some of Guatemala’s richest agricultural lands and largest farms lie. Because of this intense agricultural activity, the coastal plain - unlike the Petén region whose forests have remained relatively healthy - has lost much of its original biodiversity. However, the coastal fringe – especially its beautiful mangrove wetlands, lagoons and volcanic sand beaches – remains comparatively untouched, home to a rich variety of marine and bird life.

ARCAS's base of activities on the south coast of Guatemala is the Hawaii Park, a 3-hectare protected area on the beach, 2 kms west of the village of Hawaii and 7 kms east of the eco-resort town of Monterrico. The Park consists of a large, comfortable rancho with volunteer quarters, a smaller volunteer house, kitchen, library/office and bathrooms. Environmental exhibits and trails highlight the threats to sea turtles and other natural resources of the area. Crocodile and iguana captive breeding pens lie just behind the main rancho. On the beach, one hundred meters away, is the main sea turtle hatchery, turtle hospital and educational tanks, and a lookout tower for those spectacular Hawaiian sunsets.

Sea Turtle Conservation and Research


The Pacific leatherback turtle is unfortunately nearly extinct with only 2000 individuals remaining in the entire Pacific ocean! In 1993, ARCAS initiated its conservation activities in the Hawaii area primarily as an attempt to counteract threats to leatherback and olive ridley turtle populations by over-harvesting by local egg collectors. Despite their endangered status, virtually all sea turtle nests in Guatemala are poached and the eggs sold as a supposed aphrodisiac; clearly not necessary given a population growth rate of nearly 3%.

Under its Sea Turtle Conservation Program, ARCAS operates the most productive of the 21 hatcheries in Guatemala.  It solicits donations of sea turtle eggs from local collectors, reburies the eggs in the hatchery and after an incubation period of roughly 50 days, the hatchlings are released into the sea. It also operates the El Rosario Hatchery in the small fishing village of the same name, 8kms to the east.  Nearly 40,000 sea turtle eggs were collected at the Hawaii and El Rosario hatcheries in 2006, accounting for nearly 50% of the eggs collected in Guatemala. 

In collaboration with the British NGO AMBIOS, ARCAS also carries out very detailed research on sea turtles, including ambient conditions in hatcheries and on the beach, hatchling success rates, GPS registered crawl counts and beach profiles.  In 2007, it initiated a pioneer study with the Naval Command of the Pacific to study hatchling success rates in nests left in situ.  If you would like to participate in these research activities or would like to receive data, please contact us.  Research results can also be seen on the AMBIOS wesite.

Scott Handy and Sara Lucas, our volunteer and research coordinators at Parque Hawaii have also initiated the Sponsor-a-Nest Program.  If you would like to contribute to this very important effort, contact us or visit their website at www.sponsoranest.com.

Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea)

The population of this the largest reptile in the world is in grave danger of extinction due to the industrial longline tuna and swordfish fisheries as well as unregulated egg poaching on nesting beaches.
The leatherback’s decline has been clearly documented by Spotila (2000) and Crowder (2004) who show a reduction of 99% of nesting females in the last 25 years and an overall population remaining in the western Pacific ocean of less than 1000 individuals. (Leatherback Trust).
In response to the urgency of the situation, ARCAS has worked with CONAP, the Humane Society and other colleagues to impose a total ban on egg collecting in Guatemala. 

On the Hawaii Park, ARCAS also carries out iguana and spectacled caiman captive-breeding, offspring of which are released into the nearby mangrove wetlands to re-inforce wild populations.

   

Squeaky IX

In October, 2006, ARCAS received the donation of a 30 foot Columbia sailboat named Squeaky IX from Scott Helwig, Roger Guzlas and Jimmy Wilk who sailed it down from Chicago. Squeaky will be used to conduct marine research in the waters in front of Hawaii, monitoring the movements of sea turtle populations, and setting baseline data for a possible marine protected area in the future. It will also allow ARCAS to begin to offer sea turtle, whale and dolphin-watching on its ecotours. Let us know if you are interested in participating in such a tour.

Environmental Education and Community Development

ARCAS believes that any successful conservation effort must not only be directed at protecting natural resources but at helping local residents meet their economic, educational and social needs.   An important aspect of ARCAS's program in Hawaii is environmental education. ARCAS staff and volunteers offer classes, offer green English courses, and conduct beach clean ups and hatchling releases races with local school children. They also manage school hatcheries where the students themselves collect turtle eggs, bury them and then release the hatchlings when they are born. The aim of all these activities is to teach local children the need to conserve the natural resources on which they depend.

ARCAS also offers training courses to local adult residents in such subjects as ecotourism, food preparation and preservation, gender, health and sanitation.

Hawaii Protected Area

ARCAS is working with the Guatemalan government’s National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) to establish a 4000 hectare protected area centered on the mangrove lagoons and wetlands of the Hawaii area. As part of this process, it has held a series of consultative community workshops to develop a strategy which includes management lines in such topics as disaster relief, research, ecotourism, waste management and education. Together with the Monterrico Reserve to the west, this protected area will help ensure the conservation of what little remains of the mangrove forests on the south coast of Guatemala and will protect the most important sea turtle nesting beaches in the country. It will also serve as a model for sustainable integrated coastal management for other areas of Guatemala and the region.

Finca El Salado

The Santa Rosa area of the Pacific coast of Guatemala is experiencing the rapid expansion of sugar cane farming, primarily as speculation over the growth of the ethanol fuel industry.  Sugar cane farming is very destructive to the local environment, requiring incredible amounts of water and agrochemicals to grow it.
Communities bordering cane fields often see their wells go dry, and run-off can pollute local waterways. 
Sugar cane is also burned before being harvested, contributing to local air pollution and global warming.  At least 8 communities with a total of over 4000 residents depend directly on fish that live at one point of their lifecycle in the mangrove wetlands of the Hawaii area. 

As part of its efforts to ameliorate the effects of sugar cane farming in the area and as part of its efforts to establish the Hawaii Protected Area, ARCAS has purchased the 25 hectare El Salado Farm just to the north of the mangroves of the Hawaii area.  This community-managed buffer zone has three objectives:

    - To serve as a buffer zone for the mangroves against the expanding sugar cane industry and to establish research programs to monitor sugar cane’s effect on water quality, flora and fauna;
    - To reforest the area and establish a protected area which in the future can be used for birdwatching and other ecotouristic activities, thus offering to local residents an alternative, sustainable income source;
    - To give local subsistence farmers who have been left without a place to plant their corn a place to carry out organic farming.  10% of the land of the El Salado Farm will be set aside for farmland; the rest will be reforested.
The El Salado Farm was purchased with the support of the Netherlands Committee for the IUCN, the Humane Society’s Wildlife Land Trust and the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund. 

Alianzas

ARCAS continues its participation in the Alianzas Project, a regional project administered by the Mesoamerican Office of the IUCN (ORMA) with funds from the Norwegian development agency (NORAD).  The project is situated in three binational sites in Central America: the Bocas del Toro-Talamanca region of Panama and Costa Rica; the San Juan River area of Costa Rica-Nicaragua; and the Barra Santiago-Monterrico region of El Salvador-Guatemala.   Alianza’s aim is to support local community development so that these communities can begin to effectively conserve and manage their own natural resources.  For more information about this project,  please visit www.iucn.org/places/orma/alianzas