Nicaragua

Sustaining a Splendid Species

| ChrisHardmanWriter

CAUTIOUSLY WE PLOD THROUGH a cattle pasture trying to avoid slipping in the mud or stepping on piles of dung. In the treetops above us, we hear raucous screeching, and the closer we get, the louder and more insistent the screeching becomes. Our guide, Alexander, sets up his spotting scope and waves to us eagerly while we stumble through the tall, wet grass to reach him. Suddenly a large bird with a 3-foot wing span bursts out of the tree canopy and flies overhead. With much squawking and branch shaking another follows and then another. We stare in awe at the great green macaw, one of only 270 left in Costa Rica—a magnificent rare bird that is in danger of extinction.

Citizen conservationists such as Alexander Martinez are playing an important role in the fight to save the great green macaw. A wiry 61-year-old in constant motion, Martinez works daily on saving not only the green macaw, but also other bird species as well. He operates a small bed and breakfast in the town of Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. He and his son, Kevin, guide bird hikes and take people into the hills to visit the wildlife reserve and rescue center Martinez and a friend run. In addition, Martinez volunteers with a group of local park guards who monitor and protect green macaw nests.

In his youth, Martinez was an avid hunter, but after living in Canada for a decade he returned to a very different Costa Rica. The country had gone through a logging boom in the 60s and 70s, and the introduction of chain saws and heavy equipment greatly accelerated the process. “I was shocked that everything I left behind that was so beautiful and so green was gone,” he explains. It was then he put down his gun and picked up a pair of binoculars.

The great green macaw (Ara ambiguus) lives in wet lowlands in small pockets of forests from Honduras to Ecuador. Deforestation has shrunk their habitat and concentrated their population into 5 areas: the border of Honduras and Nicaragua, the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the Darien region of Panama and Colombia and two small populations in Ecuador. Scientists estimate that there are only 7,000 of these birds living in the wild.

One of the first people to sound the alarm about the status of the bird was World Wildlife Fund scientist George Powell. Little was known about the bird and its behavior in 1994, so Powell, who was working at the RARE Center for Tropical Conservation, started the Great Green Macaw Research and Conservation Project. He determined that Costa Rica had already lost 90% of the great green’s nesting territory and that there were only 210 birds left in the country. Even more alarming was his calculation that the species needed at least 50 breeding pairs to survive. At that time, Costa Rica only had 25 to 35.

What makes the macaw so vulnerable is its preference for the Almendro (Dipteryx panamensis) tree for feeding and nesting. At nearly 164 feet tall the almendro is a giant in the forest. When the massive branches break off, they leave behind vast tree cavities ideally suited for macaw nests. Their height and depth keep chicks safe from predators. Smaller tree cavities and bromeliads serve as watering holes, while the nuts provide a nutritious food source.

Unfortunately the almendro tree has become a popular tropical hardwood for patios, decks and floors. During Costa Rica’s initial logging boom, the almendro was safe because its wood was too hard to cut into. Loggers would clear all the other trees in the forest and leave the almendro alone in a field of grass and tree stumps. Once steel blades that could penetrate the wood became available, even the great almendro tree fell victim to the everpresent chainsaws.

In 1998 Powell recruited two young conservationists Olivier Chassot and Guisselle Monge Arias to take over the conservation aspect of the macaw project. Their conservation strategy depended heavily on community involvement and educational programs.

Chassot and Arias traveled to small rural communities in macaw habitat to talk to people about the importance of the bird and the almendro tree. They enlisted the help of local schools and recruited citizen conservationists to be nest caretakers. “When you talk to people and take the time to visit their communities, they understand the idea [of conservation],” Chassot explains.

Realizing that the only way to save the bird was to save the forest it lives in, the conservation team identified the San Juan-La Selva Biological Corridor, a 246,000-hectare geographical area connecting the Indio Maíz Biological Reserve in southeastern Nicaragua with Costa Rica’s La Selva Biological Station in the north to the Barra del Colorado Wildlife Reserve and Tortuguero National Park on Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast.  In addition they lobbied for the creation of the Maquenque National Wildlife Refuge to protect the breeding range of the macaw.

The macaw population began to stabilize in Costa Rica between 1998 -2003 and increased from 210 birds in 1994 to 275 birds in 2010.

Part of the conservation strategy in Costa Rica is to provide financial incentives for protecting the birds and their habitat. Chassot’s organization, the Tropical Science Center, has been able to provide small payments to nest caretakers.  An adopt-a-tree program pays farmers fair market value to protect their almendro trees. “Most of [the farmers] who are willing to set aside land for conservation can receive payments from the government to preserve their forest,” Chassot explains. He reports that the macaw population began to stabilize in Costa Rica between 1998 -2003 and increased from 210 birds in 1994 to 275 birds in 2010. “It shows that we have been able to reverse the trend and that the population is slowly increasing.”

NICARAGUA
IN THE SMALL community of Buena Vista, Nicaragua, brightly colored awnings provide protection from the sun. A wooden stage sets the scene for music and dancing, and a poster board display of photographs showcases tropical birds. Buena Vista was the site of the 8th annual Festival Binacional de las Lapas. Since 2002 Nicaragua has joined with Costa Rica to sponsor a yearly festival in honor of the great green macaw.  Alternatively held in Costa Rica or Nicaragua, the festival includes an equal number of Costa Rican and Nicaraguan farmers, schoolchildren, nest caretakers and government officials.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua have forged an unprecedented partnership in the name of the lapa verde. “The great green macaw has no country and needs no passport to cross the border,” explains Chassot.  “[We] make sure that conservation actions on one side of the border have no negative impact on the other.”

The Nicaraguan Conservation organization, Fundación del Río has concentrated their work in the buffer zone of Nicaragua’s Indio-Maíz biological Reserve. A dense jungle with limited access, Indio-Maíz is considered one of Nicaragua’s best preserved tracts of land and one of the most important expanses of pristine rainforest in Central America. Located in the southeast corner of the country on the border of the San Juan River, this buffer zone has recently been under assault from loggers in search of lumber and clear cutters intent on planting African palm trees for bio fuel.

Fundación del Río has been monitoring macaw activities since 2002 and has documented 35 active nests. With the help of Nicaraguan citizen conservationists and local farmers, they have recorded more than 1,500 observations of macaws for their database.

Macaws are delightful birds that captivate people with their beauty, intelligence and playful nature. In Nicaragua, as in all the other countries in the macaw’s range, macaws are victims of the pet trade. Macaws are listed in the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) as Appendix 1 which is the highest classification of protection for the most endangered species on the list. Even so, poachers capture the macaw nestlings to keep as pets, to sell to others or for export to other countries.

The removal of one or two nestlings has a great impact on the entire population because macaws are slow-breeding birds. They can take four or five years to mature, lay only two eggs at a time and nest every few years. Trading in macaw nestlings is a lucrative business with the birds selling between US $150 to $300.

To foster a love for the macaw as a special resident of Nicaragua and not as a commodity, Fundación targets the youngest members of the community. Through Radio Voz Juvenil,  Fundación Del Río broadcasts a Sunday morning program titled “Arita, the Great Green Macaw” that teaches young people and adults about the Great Green Macaw and the forest it lives in. The radio program is complemented by “Arita visita tu escuela,” a lively in-classroom educational program with games, songs, drawings and videos featuring the Great Green Macaw. Arita, a human-sized macaw mascot, has visited more than 11 schools in the municipality El Castillo so far.

ECUADOR
IN THE TROPICAL dry forests outside of Guayaquil, Ecuador, a small population of great green macaws struggles to survive in the shadow of 2.1 million people. Their sole sanctuary is the 6,000 hectare Cerro Blanco Protected Forest with 54 mammal species, 221 bird species and 100 of Ecuador’s most endangered endemic plant species. Logging, poaching and land grabbing have threatened to wipe out this population, but due to the efforts of the Pro-Forest Foundation—the NGO in charge of the reserve—the population is stable and even increasing.

The director of the Pro-Forest Foundation, Eric Horstman, has a 20-year history of conservation work in Ecuador. In 1993 after completing his 3-year assignment with the Peace Corps, he became director of the newly-formed Pro-Forest Foundation. He had heard that there were great green macaws in the reserve, but had only seen them stuffed into cages in local school zoos. “I finally saw a pair of them in the wild,” he recalls. “I was enthralled. It is a world of difference seeing a macaw in a cage as opposed to flying free in the wild.”

Horstman describes the great green macaw population in Ecuador as critically endangered and says the official estimate of 60-90 birds in Ecuador is optimistic. In addition to Cerro Blanco’s population of 11, there is another small group living in the humid tropical forests of the Esmereldas province in the North. The situation in Ecuador is so acute that scientists have recommended captive breeding of great green macaws.

Although La Fundación Ecológica Rescate Jambeli—a conservation organization that partners with the Pro-Forest Foundation—has successfully bred 17 chicks with their captive population of macaws, Horstman explains that they are holding off introducing captive birds into the wild until they establish a scientific protocol. One concern is that captive birds might introduce disease into a wild population, and of course there is the threat of injuries: macaws are fiercely territorial.

The great green macaw is officially protected in Guayaquil. But even though the city appointed the macaw their natural symbol with a strict set of regulations and ordnances concerning traffic of the species, clandestine sales of macaw fledglings continue. Fledglings are stolen from their nests in pigio trees, members of the bombacaceae family with smooth gray trunks.

The trees are hard to climb. Rather than risk [an] accident, people will just cut down the tree and hope that the chick will survive the fall. That’s just a double whammy,” Horstman explains.

Another threat to the macaw’s population is the rapid expansion of Guayaquil. Squatter settlements pop up on the city outskirts and push against the forest. Land grabbing is a problem and squatter communities have attempted to take over property within Cerro Blanco. “When we work with squatter settlements, we work with the leader,” Horstman explains.

First he obtains permission to enter the settlement, and then goes door to door with community leaders to ask people if they are interested in becoming honorary park guards. In one nearby settlement, the Pro-Forest Foundation has 11 people and one school on duty.

Horstman has found that the best deterrent to logging and poaching seems to be education, and the most compelling argument for saving the forest concerns water. There are at least 6 permanent sources of water in the reserve that the surrounding communities rely on. Horstman simply explains that without the forest, there will be no water.

“When we have engaged these people they, themselves, have recognized the ecological services of the reserve,” he says.

To strengthen the macaws’ chance for survival, the Pro-Forest Foundation has restored more than 200 acres of macaw habitat by planting native trees. “Trees that we planted in 1993 are now flowering and producing fruits. It’s not that long of a turnaround time,” Horstman explains. In that same time period the macaw population has grown by nearly 50% from a low of 6 to a high of 11. “The population seems to be slowly increasing,” Horstman says. “That is a hopeful sign.”

Efforts to protect the great green macaw have a ripple effect across its 6-country territory. To save the bird, the forest has to be saved first. In doing so, all the other smaller, less dramatic species retain their forest homes as well. In that respect the impact the bird has on its surroundings is truly great and truly green.

Published in Americas magazine, January-February 2011, by Chris Hardman

 

The Grand City of Granada

| ChrisHardmanWriter

MARAUDING PIRATES, bloodthirsty mercenaries and roughneck gold rushers all played a part in the history of the colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua. But in spite of being burned to the ground twice and taken over as a stronghold for a foreign filibuster, Granada has managed to persevere and even prosper—while emerging as Nicaragua’s best hope for its entry into the international tourism market.

History dominates Granada’s landscape. Founded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1524, Granada is known as the oldest city in the Americas. Additionally, in 1524, Córdoba founded the Nicaraguan city of León to the North. The two cities have sustained a long rivalry since then.

Nicaragua became a republic in 1835; and in the years that followed, Granada—which supported a wealthy and conservative populace—and León—whose citizens were much more liberal—battled for dominance of the fledgling nation. Hostilities increased irreparably in the 1850s resulting in a civil war. Once Managua was chosen as the capital of Nicaragua in 1857, the fighting diminished.

Looming over this colonial city is the now dormant volcano Mombacho.”

Granada became Spain’s showcase for elegant colonial buildings and high society, and the city’s residents prospered. Because of its proximity to Lake Nicaragua—which provides access to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan River—Granada flourished through commerce and trade.

This access also made Granada vulnerable to Dutch, French and English pirates who attempted to invade and then destroy Granada. When Granada’s most important churches and buildings were burned by outside forces, its citizens would rebuild their beloved city again.

Another source of wealth was Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company that was used to transport thousands of gold-rushers to California. In the 1800s the most expeditious route from New York to San Francisco was to go through Central America. From the Caribbean, prospectors followed the San Juan River inland to Lake Nicaragua and then crossed Nicaragua by stagecoach to the Pacific Ocean.

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Granada’s strategic location on the gold route attracted the attention of William Walker, a well-known 49ner living in California. In partnership with Granada’s bitter rivals in León, Walker contracted 300 men described as “colonists liable to military duty” for an expedition to Nicaragua. What followed was a series of military campaigns against Granada beginning in 1855.

Walker and his men eventually conquered Granada and ruled Nicaragua for nearly two years. Walker even managed to win a presidential election. During his presidency, he drafted a new constitution that reinstituted slavery and made English the official language. To gain favor and financial support from wealthy Southerners in the United States, Walker promoted the idea of establishing a slave trade in Central America.

Once Nicaragua’s neighbors, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Salvador and Honduras, began to suspect that Walker might infiltrate their territories, they joined with the most powerful enemy Walker had made—Cornelius Vanderbilt—to depose Walker and his men.

Vanderbilt used his Accessory Transit Company to shut off Walker’s only means of communication with the United States. He withdrew his ocean steamers and left Walker without men or ammunition, and he hired soldiers of fortune to block any attempt at escape to the Caribbean. He aligned with the Costa Ricans and contributed both money and men to wage war against Walker.

Boxed in with no way of securing additional men and supplies, Walker reluctantly retreated from Granada. Unfortunately, upon leaving Granada, Walker ordered his troops to burn the city to the ground, leaving behind many destroyed or damaged colonial buildings and an ominous placard declaring, “Here was Granada.”

Even after he was expelled from Granada, Walker planned to return to the country to which he believed he was the rightful ruler. At the end of his book, The War in Nicaragua, he wrote:

“The history of the world presents no such Utopian vision as that of an inferior race yielding meekly and peacefully to the controlling influence of a superior people… I trust the foregoing narrative shows that the stronger race kept throughout on the side of right and justice. Nor kings nor presidents can arrest a movement based on truth and conducted with justice.”

In 1857 he attempted once more to take over Granada but was arrested and sent back to the United States. The last paragraph of his book illuminates his mindset at that time:

“By the bones of the moldering dead at Masaya, at Rivas, and at Granada, I adjure you never to abandon the cause of Nicaragua. Let it be your waking and your sleeping thought to devise means for a return to the land whence we were unjustly brought. And, if we be but true to ourselves, all will yet end well.”

After writing those words, Walker returned to Central America one more time where he was captured by the British and turned over to a Honduran firing squad.

In the book, The Real Soldiers of Fortune published in 1906, writer Richard Harding Davis portrayed Walker as defiant to the end. Squarely he faced his executioners and declared in Spanish:

“I die a Roman Catholic. In making war upon you at the invitation of the people of Ruatan I was wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my punishment with resignation. I would like to think my death will be for the good of society.”

Davis described the final chilling moments of Walker’s life: “From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but, Walker was not dead. So, a sergeant stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have made him one of an empire of slaves.”

Granada’s tumultuous history is chronicled at the Museo del Convento de San Francisco located next to the blue and white Igelsia de San Francisco. Founded in 1529 under the name Inmaculada Concepción by Fray Toribio Benavente Motilinia, the convent mirrors the history of Granada.

It was built in 1529, attacked by the English pirate Henry Morgan in 1665 and burned again in 1685. More than 100 years later in 1856, William Walker commandeered the church to house his troops and intern his prisoners. The Iglesia de San Francisco was one of the buildings Walker destroyed when he fled the city with his men.

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Today the covenant and church have been restored, most recently with aid from the Swiss government. Rooms surrounding the museum courtyard display paintings, religious artifacts, a scale model of the city of Granada and pre-Columbian stone sculptures from Zapateria Island in Lake Nicaragua. Sprawling catacombs underneath the convent and church house the remains of priests and other prominent citizens of Granada dating back to 1546.

A second museum named Mi Museo, which is free to the public, specializes in pre-Colombian pottery. Under glass on top of plain, white pedestals are ceramics from throughout Central America that date from 2,000 BC to 1550 AD.

This private collection is open to the public due to the generosity of its Danish owner Peder Kolind. In addition to receiving nearly 12,000 visitors a year from Nicaragua and other countries, the museum supports archeological digs and restores ceramic archeological pieces.

The spirit of this museum is beautifully explained by archeologist Geoffrey McCafferty from the University of Calgary in Canada: “Mi Museo esta designado a ser un museo de la comunidad, el que se ha vuelto el punto focal para importantes reunions. Y no simplemente para los ricos y famosos, sino para toda la gente de Granada: ricos y pobres, educados y no educados. No es solo Mi Museo, sino nuestro museo.”

The best way to explore Granada is by walking. Gritty streets with uneven sidewalks painted in pastel colors, showcase 16th and 18th-century Spanish colonial architecture.

Behind thick wooden doors and wrought iron gates are colonial homes with 12-foot high adobe walls, ornate pillars and dark wooden accents. The living areas of the homes are typically built around a garden courtyard complete with a bubbling fountain and a squawking parrot or two. When remodeling a home in the historic center of the city, owners have to follow strict regulations to keep in line with the true traditional Spanish colonial architecture.

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The people of Granada are proud of their city’s resilience. The faithful regularly worship in churches blackened from the fires of the past. A standard horse and buggy tour through the city takes visitors to William Walker’s old house—now a high-end souvenir shop—and past several of the buildings Walker burned to the ground. The local tour guide describes Walker plainly as “muy malo.”

Looming over this colonial city is the now dormant volcano Mombacho. Even though it hasn’t errupted  in the past 1,000 years, visitors can visit cracks in the Earth called fumaroles where clouds of sulfur drift out of the ground. From the top of Mombacho, Granada appears to be a flotilla of red tile roofs floating between Lake Nicaragua to the east and Laguna de Apoyo to the west.

Only recently has Nicaragua garnered international attention as a desirable tourist destination. Nicaragua’s tourism board INTUR (Institute Nicaraguense de Turismo) is aggressively courting European and North American tourists touting Nicaragua as a safe country with natural beauty and cultural experiences.

In June, INTUR hosted the country’s first International Tourism Fair at the Crowne Plaza Convention Center in Managua. “Many countries had a decrease in foreign tourists, and yet, Nicaragua showed positive results both in tourist arrivals and revenues in the sector,” says Nicaraguan Tourism Board President Mario Salinas. According to INTUR, the amount of foreign tourists to visit Nicaragua in 2009 was 931,904, representing an increase of 8.6% compared to 2008.

INTUR predicts that at the end of 2010, Nicaragua will receive around 1 million tourists, 7.5 percent more than in 2009. The agency also forecasts an increase in activity revenue of $400 million, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.

One way that Granada has successfully attracted international tourists is through its Spanish schools. Students stay with a local host family while attending intensive Spanish classes.

As a tourist destination, Granada has long been popular with backpackers from Europe. Plenty of low-budget hostels and cheap, but, tasty restaurants are located close to the central Plaza.  The streets are safe to stroll on, and the people are courteous to foreigners. A variety of higher end hotels with full service rooms are located in the tourist part of town.

Many travelers like to use Granada as a base to explore Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua, nearby Volcan Mombacho and the cities of Masaya and Leon.

But it is Granada’s history that draws most of its visitors. They come to see the beauty of the colonial churches and homes. They come for a carriage ride through narrow city streets. They come to learn about the city that could not be destroyed, the city that survives against all odds, the city that is Granada.

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman

 

 

Energy from Water in Nicaragua

| ChrisHardmanWriter

CARLOS COLONEL owns an avocado farm on the slopes of an extinct volcano on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua. A while back, he realized that he could use the waterfall on his property to create clean energy, not only for himself, but for some of the poorest residents of the island who had never had power before. His quest to create a small hydroelectric power plant took nearly 5 years as he overcame geography and skeptical investors to bring light where there previously had been darkness. Now he employs local people to run the power plants that provide low-cost, environmentally-friendly electricity to 35% of the people on the island.

As one of Nicaragua’s most popular tourist destinations, the northwest side of Ometepe island was well equipped with power stations. But the rural side, where Kinloch has his avocado farm, was left in darkness. To make his dream of renewable energy a reality, Kinloch and his business partners had to raise more than one million dollars by convincing potential investors that they would see a return on their investment and that the rural villagers would pay their bills.

Kinloch hired community members to build the power plant and install the pipeline on the slope of the volcano. All of the power plant supplies had to be shipped to the island from the mainland. Once the pipeline was complete, an earthquake hit Ometepe destroying 30% of the pipeline. Undaunted, Kinloch and his team forged ahead to face the next challenge: raising money to purchase power lines. It took another 3 years for Kinloch to find an investor to supply 35 kilometers of power line to the rural communities of Ometepe.

Kinloch ignored the skeptics on the mainland who told him the local people would break the power plant equipment. “We took small farmers who didn’t have any idea about the computer and energy, and we taught them how to run the turbine,” Kinloch explains.  “I taught the guy who milks the cows to work the turbine, and he can do it.” Kinloch purposely hired only local people, who now have a reliable source of income in addition to access to clean energy.

Electricity came to the rural side of the island with much excitement. “We had to teach them about energy and how to use the energy,” Kinloch explains. “For the first month it was crazy. They had the light on every night and radio on all the time.” Kinloch relied on community leaders and teachers to teach the community how to use energy wisely and safely.

“The mind grows when you have light,” says Kinloch. Electricity changes lives. Land value increased and some residents have sold land to build better houses and start businesses. Farmers, who use the hydro powered irrigation system, can increase their yield by extending their growing season well past the rainy season. Kinloch’s goal is build enough power plants to supply 100% of the power on the island. His dream is for all of Ometepe to enjoy the benefits of renewable energy.

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Purses from Plastic

| ChrisHardmanWriter

THE UBIQUITOUS PLASTIC grocery bag—used for lunches, garbage cans, and groceries—is one of the most prolific sources of pollution in modern-day society. Scientists estimate that worldwide people use 500 trillion plastic bags each year. In the Americas alone, the United States reports using 380 billion plastic bags a year. Cheap to buy and easy to store, the plastic bag has become the favorite of grocery stores who no longer ask, “Paper or plastic?”

Lack of recycling programs and improper disposal of the bags create a waste nightmare and environmental hazards that are too complex to track. Non biodegradable plastic bags travel on the wind polluting our oceans and forests or take up permanent residence in our already overcrowded landfills.

Since 2006 an innovative program that started in Costa Rica is using those bags in a most environmentally friendly way. Women living in small villages on the Caribbean Coast convert the plastic bags into thread and weave attractive and colorful purses with them.

Weaving for Nature is run by WIDECAST, a conservation organization that protects sea turtles in the Caribbean and its surroundings. The program solves several problems at once. The bags are re-used, eliminating the need for disposal, and the business gives people an environmentally friendly income source.

The program is organized to promote fair trade standards with an environmental mission. The weaver receives 75% of the profit and the rest goes toward sea turtle conservation efforts. The weavers, mostly housewives in small villages, work under fair and relaxed conditions and are compensated for all stages of production from collecting and washing the bags through the finished product.

According to Didiher Chacon-Chaverri, WIDECAST Country Coordinator in Costa Rica, weavers produce about 3 purses a week that means they can earn $180 a month to supplement their family’s main income.

To date the project has employed more than 50 women in villages on the coast of Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua. In 2008 the sale of bags, coin purses, plastic figures and Christmas Tree ornaments generated $75,000 in income for the four coastal communities.

The environmental benefits of this program are far-reaching. Along the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and other countries, the plastic bag is a deadly enemy of marine habitats.

Because many of these bags are thrown on the ground or tossed into rivers, they often end up in the sea where they suffocate coral and kill sea turtles. For the hapless sea turtle gliding through the ocean, a plastic bag looks just like its favorite food, the jellyfish. The turtle gobbles up the bag and either chokes on the plastic or feels full and stops looking for real food.

Unfortunately plastic waste of any kind affects the entire marine environment. Because plastic bags are made of polyethylene, they are not biodegradable, and even if the bags are broken into smaller pieces, their tiny particles invade all levels of the food chain causing disease and sometimes death for marine life.

The Dolphin Research Center in Florida estimates that 100,000 marine mammals die each year from eating plastic bags.

WIDECAST estimates that each purse made is removing approximately 70 plastic bags from the environment for a total of 12,000 plastic bags a month. The bags are sold throughout Costa Rica in tourist areas and gift shops and online through http://www.inbio.ac.cr.

They range in color and size and come in various styles including beach bags, calabash bags, messenger bags, water bottle cases, and coin purses. For more information about the project, visit latinamericanseaturtles.org.

Published in Americas magazine, September-October 2009, by Chris Hardman