River Turtle (Charapa) Repopulation Program

SUMMARY

The small Cofan community of Zabalo, located in what is presently the Reserva de Producción Faunística de Cuyabeno (RPFC), began the “Charapa Project” in 1989 as a village-based response to the decline in Amazon River Turtle populations along the Aguarico River. Almost twenty years later, the project now involves four different communities along the river, and has generated tremendous amounts of scientific data concerning turtle biology. More importantly, with over fifty thousand turtles released, the turtle population along the Aguarico has grown to the point where limited harvesting of eggs and turtles is once again possible. This project was the Cofan’s first major conservation effort, and it has laid the foundation for much what we have accomplished in the subsequent years.

The Amazon River Turtles (two species, Podocnemis expansa and Podocnemis unifilis) were traditionally one of the most important food resources for riverine populations throughout the Amazon and Orinico basins. For the Cofan culture as with other riverine cultures, the calendar of the year was determined by the annual migrations of entire villages to the nesting beaches to harvest the protein and oil rich eggs. Salted and dried, the eggs were one of the few foods that allowed a build up of economic surplus that could be used during prolonged trading voyages and large scale social activities. Likewise, the adult turtles were an important protein source that could be kept in pens against the lean times.

Populations in Amazonia grew and urbanizations such as Manaus and Iquitos increased, a huge commercial market developed for both the eggs and the adults. Combined with the use of modern technological innovations such as outboard motors and spotlights, this unregulated commercialization resulted in a tremendous over exploitation of the resource. By the 1980’s, turtle populations throughout Amazonia had been reduced to critical levels.

Meanwhile, the tiny Cofan community of Zabalo was deeply involved in what was turning out to be a highly successful model of community based ecotourism. Besides providing a solid economic foundation for the community, the program had increased the community’s awareness of the need for conservation strategies to protect its rain forest territories. Zabalo pioneered a program of auto-regulation of hunting activities aimed at protecting species that had high touristic values, beginning in the early 1980’s. The visible success of these early measures set the stage for the community’s reaction to the alarming decline in the turtle populations. And so, at the annual village meeting in December of 1989, the community banned all harvesting of turtles and turtle products within Zabalo territories. This was the beginning of Zabalo’s “Proyecto Charapa”, the first turtle recuperation effort of its kind in the Amazon and to date, the most successful.

Everyone in the community was aware that a simple ban at the local level would have little effect on the over-all turtle population. Under normal conditions, less than 1% of the eggs that are laid in a given year will actually make it all the way to adulthood. More proactive intervention was obviously in order. Various possible measures were discussed, including protection of beaches, artificial hatching, attempts at reproduction in captivity, and others. With a $200 fund for equipment provided from community funds, experimentation began. By 1991, several nests had been successfully hatched out under care of interested families, and over two hundred babies were being cared for during the first critical months of their lives in ponds made by raising the sides of old dugout canoes. After a year in captivity, the babies were released into the wild, and room was made for the next batch.

METHODOLOGY

During the subsequent years, the community has refined and expanded its program. The system that developed involves all members of the community. Each family has a day of the week during which it becomes their responsibility to check particular beaches. The family members go out in the morning and check for fresh nests, which are then “staked” and flagged, with information as to date, river conditions, and family responsible for the nest. The family then takes charge of caring for its nests during the two months it takes for them to hatch. If a flood threatens the beach, the families with nests there carefully remove the nests and “replant” them on a higher location. This is especially tricky during the first week after a nest is laid, as the embryos are not developed enough to withstand any change in orientation of the egg. Also, the position in the nest affects the temperature of the egg, which in turn affects the sex of the turtle, with females being produced at higher temperatures at the top of a clutch and males being produced in the lower section of the nest. With practice, however, even the children have become expert in handling the nests, with over 95% survival rates of moved nests!

Once the eggs begin to hatch, the family in charge collects the babies and keeps them in old kettles or tubs for about a week to ensure there are no diseases or other problems. Then the hatchlings are turned over to one of the two village “project coordinators”, whose responsibility begins with keeping a list of each family’s number of hatchlings. A bonus of twenty five cents is paid for each hatchling, which represents an important incentive for especially children to work on the project. The coordinators then put the hatchlings in large artificial ponds, where they will live for six months to a year as their shells harden and they grow in size. A recent program handled by the women of the community has established optimum feeding regimes to increase the turtles’ potential for survival in the wild.

At the end of the year, the now much larger turtles are taken to different points along the Aguarico and Zabalo rivers and released into the wild. A percentage are marked with easily visible paint to be able to follow dispersion and survival rates during the first year in the wild.

Evaluation of the project is carried on by the village monitors. Three methodologies are presently used. The first is a bi-monthly “visual census”, aimed at follow-up on marked individuals and collection of data on local migration of turtle populations, as well as generating comparative numbers of individuals seen over the years. The second is simply a continuous process of informal interviews with local riverine groups as to perceived changes in turtle populations, with special emphasis on any sightings of marked “Zabalo turtles”. This serves the dual purpose of broadening the base of informal information on turtle populations and of socializing the Zabalo efforts at a larger level. The third methodology, and to date the most telling, is the actual monitoring of the beaches along the river during the nesting season. If the project is actually working, we should begin to see concrete results in the form of “returnees”- hatchlings we have released that are reaching adulthood and returning to lay on our beaches. In actual fact, this is exactly what has happened, with numbers of laying females rising sharply beginning in 1999- eight years after the first releases, and climbing steadily during the subsequent years. Starting with an initial count of under two hundred layers on our beaches, we have now passed the thousand mark with the tendency steadily upward. In addition to this increase in numbers, an interesting side effect has been in the extension of the nesting season. The older Cofans remember the nesting season as extending from October to late January in the early part of the twentieth century. But by the beginning of the project, most laying occurred in the latter part of November, and the latest recorded layers were in the first few days of January. Now the season is back to its old time vigor, with a scattered few even pushing the envelope and laying as early as September and as late as February.

FUNDING HISTORY

During the early years of the project, the community sought funding from interested non-government organ

izations to be able to build larger ponds, and provide economic benefits to the front-line workers. Paradoxically, it was extremely difficult to find supporters. Outside agencies took the attitude that since the initiative was truly coming from within the community instead of from outside planning, it was probably not valid. Meanwhile, Ecuadorian scientists took advantage of the community efforts to begin to collect data concerning nest temperatures, mortality rates, and other information, rarely giving more than lip service to recognizing the project’s origin and the true sources of the information gathered. It was not until the Field Museum of Chicago got interested in the project in 1998 that things were able to really take off, with adequate funding for infrastructure and for community involvement and recognition for Zabalo “scientists”.

At the same time, this project became the first program to be handled by the newly formed Fundación para la Sobrevivencia del Pueblo Cofan (FSC). FSC, with a leadership drawn from Zabalo and solidly backed by Zabalo, has since developed into the technical branch of the Cofan Nation, handling a wide array of conservation programs covering over 1,000,000 acres of montane and tropical rain forests. FSC continues to handle most of the outside contacts regarding the project, including a long term relationship with the Ministry of Environment, and with the scientific and donor community.

In 2005, an International Development Bank fund was made available that allowed the extension of the Cofan model to other communities within the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. The Kichwa communities of Playas de Cuyabeno and Zancudo, both neighbors and long time observers of the Cofan success, bought into the process and now have their own ponds, coordinators, and nest rescue programs.

The project itself is extremely simple, and costs very little, with almost all the funding going directly into the communities via hatchling bonuses, salaries for monitors and coordinators, and other jobs. Zabalo costs are less than $1 per turtle released. The neighboring Kichwa communities still lag in production as community members learn skill and local turtle populations rebuild, but even so, the entire basic project costs about $40,000 per year. The optimum project budget including a project manager-biologist runs to $75,000 per year.

LONG TERM FINANCING STRATEGIES

To date, most of this funding has come in via non-government organizations and foundation grants. However, three strategies for continuing funding are in development. The first is the sale of “turtle certificates”- involving the development of relationships with zoos, schools, and a broad donor base that would offer to help pay for the “front line” of conservation. This strategy is presently providing about 15% of the cost of the project. The second, strongly pushed by the Ministry of Environment, is the development of a commercialization process where smaller and weaker turtles with less chance of successful adaptation to the wild be offered as certified pets on the international pet market. This strategy is still under analysis, but if implemented, would work within the framework of a “fondo fiduciario”, or independent trust fund, that would handle the finances. The third strategy is the development of a true “trust fund” that would provide a long term source of funding that would cover the recurring costs of the immediate project and allow the expansion of the model to other interested communities. The high initial cost of the capitalization of this fund is a major obstacle; however, there is a possibility at present that the Ecuadorian government will put up the initial seed fund.

RESULTS

The turtle species Podocnemis unifilis is identified on the UICN Red list as “Vulnerable”, and the species Podocnemis expansa as “Critically endangered”. Over the project’s life, the Cofan at Zabalo have made incredible progress towards the restoration of these species’ populations along the Rio Aguarico.

Statistical data is available from 1998 when the fledgling FSC took over the technical side of the project work on behalf of the community.

Table 1 Number of individuals managed from 2000 - 2007 in the community of Zábalo (Proyecto Amaznor 2004-2007).

Table 2. Number of nests (nidos), eggs (huevos) and Charapas en the Community of Zábalo (Proyecto Amaznor 2004- 2007).

Table 3: 2007 liberated turtles (Proyecto Amaznor 2004-2007).

The project, in addition to having rebuilt the once-endangered populations of Amazon River Turtles along the Aguarico, has also had a tremendous effect on the environmental consciousness of an entire generation. Children begin to track turtles, learn marking techniques, move nests, and handle cute little babies at an early age. While parents are very aware that the $0.25 per baby turtle doesn’t even cover the cost of gasoline for the outboard motor to go take care of the beaches, for children it is a tremendous incentive to get involved in first hand conservation- something no amount of “environmental education” can begin to match. The effects are widely visible. Zabalo has one of the most developed management systems for its forests and wildlife resources in South America. The community provides a disproportionate number of park guards and other conservation professionals to the Ecuadorian national system. Zabalo members are at the forefront of Cofan conservation efforts in other areas of Cofan territory, including lands in neighboring Colombia. And, as we expand the reach of this model to other communities, we expect that they in turn will follow suit, “buying in” to the conservation of these forests and rivers as they learn basic conservation by taking care of baby turtles.

Meanwhile, in addition to the primary economic benefits perceived by community members for their direct contributions to the project, numerous secondary benefits are immediately apparent. The first and most important is that, as the turtle population has recovered, all the involved communities are once again able to harvest limited numbers of eggs for consumption. This means that this valuable source of proteins and fats is again present in community diets, helping avoid nutritional problems that have been noted in other Amazonian populations as forest resources dwindle.

A second and likewise important benefit has been the training of a generation in conservation techniques. At present, members of Zabalo are actively involved as park rangers in three different national reserves; others work as monitors with outside scientists measuring forest production; still others work as data processors, handling data entry for everything from government soil analysis efforts to university biology projects.

IMPACT

A clear understanding of the position of the local community in the over-all context of global conservation strategies is necessary if we are to understand the full impact of this project. The local community can no longer be viewed as an isolated entity that enters into conservation activities for its own benefit; rather, it must be viewed as conservation’s “front line”: the local level caretaker of a globally important resource, where, if it is true that some primary benefits may devolve upon the caretaker, nonetheless, the overall “product” benefits everyone. In this context, Zabalo’s efforts at rebuilding the Aguarico River turtle populations are not only important to the immediate community but also to the rest of the world as part of a process that includes the conservation of biodiversity, the care of the environment, and the generation of environmental services.

This, then, is the context in which this project has sought and continues to seek outside funding.

The conservation awareness that has been a primary product of this project also translates into a deeper understanding of the term “sustainability”. The communities, in spite of the fact that conservation oriented work is typically not highly paid, have chosen to continue working within the conservation framework rather than opting for the short-term economic opportunities offered by mining, timber, and oil companies.

In 1991, the territory of the Zabalo Cofan was incorporated within the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve and in 1992, an innovative agreement was signed with the Ministry of Environment to formally recognize the Cofan’s indigenous rights within the National System of Protected Areas. This was the first time that a management agreement was signed between an indigenous nation and the Ministry of Environment. This was achieved partly due to the Ministry’s recognition of the successful turtle conservation program that the community had initiated. We continue to work closely with the Ministry of Environment and our model of “co-management” within the Cuyabeno national park has been replicated with other indigenous groups.

The Charapa Project is an extremely rare case of an indigenous community that decided to take on the task of saving a species on its own. The community used traditional knowledge as a base for developing a practical and viable solution to an immediate problem. In the process, the community not only succeeded in reversing the population decline of the Amazon River Turtle, but also succeeded in creating a powerful environmental consciousness that has led to Cofan leadership in Ecuadorian indigenous conservation efforts.

The Cofan Survival Fund (501c3) and the Fundación para la Sobrevivencia del Pueblo Cofán are both non-profit organizations in their respective countries.