SINAC
The lack of staff of 'Area de Conservation Tempisque' (ACT), makes it difficult to declare one sector of 'Junquillal' beach as a wildlife refuge; however, the will of the community to preserve the 'Baula' turtle has made the authorities of `Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservacion' (SINAC) support environmental projects which are supported by the neighbours and the WWF (World Wildlife Fund).
The director of ACT, Emel Rodriguez, said that the people of this town are eager to safeguard their natural riches.
To declare a place as a protected area, it requires a thorough investigation of the flora and fauna, delimiting the extension covering the refuge, and providing park rangers, and due to the shortage of staff all of these procedures have been delayed.
Junquillal Beach
Although we do not have a defined date for declaring the site as a refuge, Rodriguez added that the effort of the community to safeguard the 'Baula' turtle will become a reality when the beach is protected by law.
Last May 'Baula Boys'; a group of young people of that coastal area, together with the WWF, helped 886 turtles to be born. Nine females came to spawn several times, in a place where it had been impossible to achieve nesting in the last three years due to total looting of nests in order to sell them.
When we started our work here, the hatching rate (births per nest) can be said to be 0% because illegal extraction was of 100%; now we monitor the reptiles and their eggs in every arrival at night and we have been working to raise awareness so we are confident that this work will be entirely successful when the whole community identifies with the turtles, announced Gabriel France of the WWF.
France mentioned that the spawning which occurred four months ago qualifies as the nesting season's most successful for sea turtles in recent years. These results have motivated many in the community to develop in the short term a reforestation project of 'primary forest', because the vegetation is key to the spawning environment of the turtles which has been lost in front of the beach.
