Stories from South and Central America

Once I had recovered from the shock of my roadside encounter with a Tarantula, I arrived safely in Las Tunas, a tiny fishing village on the North coast of Ecuador, to work on a turtle conservation project. Ten years ago the small community became very concerned that so few turtles were laying eggs on the beach there and turtles numbers were dwindling. They realized that this was due to two things; firstly, the amount of plastic rubbish on the beach and secondly, the use of massive fishing nets which caught tuna, the main food of the turtles, and which also killed many turtles who got caught up in the them. Admirably they pulled together to address this issue by launching a campaign under the slogan ‘No nature, no life.’ As a community they cleaned up the beach, sectioned off areas solely as breeding areas and banned the use of nets locally.…