Safeguard habitat for wildlife in Central America!

This fall, we celebrated the International Coastal Cleanup for the fifteenth year! This worldwide event is supported by the Ocean Conservancy. Together with the efforts of 359 volunteers and Paso Pacífico team members, we removed 1.8 tons of trash from beaches and rivers in Nicaragua.

Over 8 local organizations and companies pitched in to help, 

Cleaner beaches :

Give turtles a better chance of reaching the ocean.

Stop pollutatants and plastics from reaching the ocean.

Improve survival rates for a variety of marine creatures.

Create a safer environment for beach-goers and surfers.

We are currently working with several organisations in El Salvador to create a World Surf Reserve of 20,796 hectares of which approximately 11,000 hectares is marine environment . The intention is that development on this land would be restricted to environmentally friendly projects, in an attempt to limit waste and pollutants which would otherwise end up in the ocean. In addition to protecting the ocean for surfers, we expect to protect remaining coral reefs. A number of endanged species live in the proposed reserve including spider monkeys, leatherback turtles and yellow-naped amazon parrots. An area of 6,151 would be protected from any further development.

Your support for Paso Pacifico's efforts to safeguard habitat in western Central America has made a big impact. Here are a few quick updates from the field:

• Spider monkey population monitoring is underway in Nicaragua, and in El Salvador, a critically endangered population of spider monkeys has been located and habituated for future research. Thanks to your support, our rangers thwarted hunting of baby spider monkeys in at least two instances. 
• Our team partnered with Fundacion Naturaleza and Proyecto Megaptera along with our incountry partner FUNZEL to support humpback whale monitoring in El Salvador. During the season from January to March, over 179 individual whales were counted and 75 were identified via the platform Happy Whale. One Paso Pacifico volunteer, Ula Leavitt wrote about her experiences helping out with the whale project on our blog.
• Camera trap monitoring continues and our team has encountered jaguar tracks and captured jaguars on video. Their presence is a sign that your support is making a difference. Thank you!
• Our sea turtle rangers continue to protect nesting turtles with nearly one thousand green and olive ridely sea turtles released to the ocean this spring! In El Salvador, we teamed up with FUNZEL to offer conservation incentives to community members protecting critically endangered leatherback sea turtles.
• Its been a busy dry season with 188 Junior Rangers active in that program, our rangers and education team impart lessons or go on weekly hikes or beach walks with groups of students. These children are the future of biodiversity conservation. Your support from them really matters.
• Our bird monitoring and habitat protection efforts keep expanding and this Spring we saw the highest number of birds during Global Big Day (350 birds). Our two bird banding station is also making a big difference by helping to collect valuable data about birds.
• Our community rangers in El Salvador are very active in removing garbage in their communities and in Nicaragua, community rangers have removed more than 3000 lbs of debris in the past four months,
• Despite hight poaching pressure, we were able to successfully protect six parrot nests and see 14 parrots make it back into the wild. There is a terrible poaching network operating in Central America and recently as many of 100 wild yellow naped amazon parrots were intercepted in China and Miami.  21 of those birds are in Southern California with the nonprofit So Cal Rescoue and we are actively working to support them in their efforts to repatriate them to Central America where they could live their life in the wild. 
• Did you hear about the river barriers that stop plastic pollutoin? We are implementing these in El Salvador with our partner organization Oriente Salvaje through funding from the World Surf League. We are successfully removing hundreds of pounds of garbage from rivers that reach reefs, mangroves and surf breaks. 

These are just a few updates for you, but as always, if you have any questions about specific programs please feel free to reach out to us. And please consider supporting this campaign with an additional donation or by sharing it with friends and family.