The concentration of clorophyll in the tropical Eastern Pacific, off Costa Rica’s northwest coast, reflects a high level of productivity and a healthy food chain. Credit: Kip Evans/MarViva Foundation

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSE, Oct 20 2014 (IPS)

The vast habitat known as the Costa Rican Thermal Convection Dome in the eastern Pacific Ocean will finally become a protected zone, over 50 years after it was first identified as one of the planet’s most biodiversity-rich marine areas.

At the 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP12), held Oct. 6–17 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Dome was declared an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area (EBSA), at Costa Rica’s request.

The measure will boost conservation of and research on the area, which is a key migration and feeding zone for species like the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), and the short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis).

“Making the ocean healthy guarantees an improvement in the living standards of the people who depend in one way or another on the country’s marine resources,” the deputy minister of water, oceans, coasts and wetlands, Fernando Mora, told Tierramérica shortly after the Dome was declared an EBSA at COP12.

“It is one of the richest areas on the planet with a food chain that starts with krill (Euphausiacea), which attracts other species, including blue whales and dolphins,” Jorge Jiménez, the director general of the MarViva Foundation, told Tierramérica.

“In that area is one of the greatest concentrations of dolphins in the American Pacific, that come from the west coast of California, to feed and breed,” he said.

The Costa Rican Thermal Convection Dome is a key migratory route for blue and humpback whales. The whale watching industry is flourishing in Costa Rica’s Pacific waters. Credit: MarViva Foundation

The Costa Rican Thermal Convection Dome is an area 300 to 500 km wide where ocean and wind currents bring the mineral- and nutrient-rich cold deeper water to the surface, creating the perfect ecosystem for a vast variety of marine life.

The nutrients give rise to a highly developed food chain, ranging from phytoplankton and zooplankton – the productive base of the marine food web – to mammals like dolphins and blue whales, which migrate from the waters off the coast of California.

Because the dome is a mobile phenomenon caused by wind and sea currents, for half of the year it is just off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast (in the area of Papagayo, in the northwest of the country) and during the other half of the year it is blown further out to sea. The centre of the dome is 300 km from the coast of this Central American nation.

“It is one of the six biodiversity-rich domes of this kind in the world,” Omar Lizano, a physicist and oceanographer, told Tierramérica. “The Costa Rican dome is the only one that is produced by the force of the wind that comes from the Caribbean and picks up speed over the Pacific, and makes the deeper water rise to the surface, which brings up a lot of rich nutrients.”

In an initiative backed by MarViva and other organisations, the Costa Rican government decided that the “upwelling system of Papagayo and adjacent areas” will be an EBSA in the tropical eastern Pacific.

Some civil society organisations have proposed regional initiatives involving the area, which they sometimes refer to as the Central American dome. But deputy minister Mora said the dome is a Costa Rican phenomenon.

He pointed out that the scientific term for the area is the Costa Rican Thermal Convection Dome, the name it was given by U.S. physical oceanographer Klaus Wyrtki. In 1948 he began to study marine mammal sightings made from boats navigating from California to Panama.

For the local authorities, conservation of the dome and the Papagayo upwelling system is among the priorities in the waters of the Pacific, because protecting the ecosystem brings economic benefits. Approval of the declaration of the dome as an EBSA by the 194 CBD signatory countries now makes protection of the area obligatory, said the deputy minister.

In the case of exploitable species like tuna, the ministry of the environment and energy (MINAE) has drawn up a zoning decree that would make it possible to regulate tuna fishing in the dome. The tourism industry, a pillar of the Costa Rican economy, would also benefit from protection of the dome, because it is a migration route for blue and humpback whales, which draws whale watchers.

Leatherback sea turtles in their sanctuary in Playa Grande, Costa Rica. In the last few years the population has declined, with fewer than 100 coming ashore in nesting season. Credit: Kip Evans/MarViva Foundation

In September, the sixth annual Festival of Whales and Dolphins, dedicated to whale watching in southeast Costa Rica, brought in 40,000 dollars the first day alone, according to deputy minister Mora, whose office forms part of the MINAE.

Government officials, scientists and members of civil society hope this will make it possible to generate more information on one of the planet’s most biodiversity-rich marine areas.

“From our scientific point of view, the first thing that should be done is to carry out research, and it is the last thing that is being done,” said Lizano, an oceanographer with the Marine Science and Limnology Research Center (CIMAR) of the University of Costa Rica.

The area has been explored on several occasions. The last time was in January 2014, with the participation of MarViva and Mission Blue, an international organisation focused on the protection of the seas, which is one of the activist groups that pushed for special protection of the dome.

They studied the role played by the protection of the leatherback sea turtle out at sea.

Although the dome is in Costa Rican territorial waters, the fact that it is mobile means it has an influence on the exclusive economic zones of other Central American countries, like Nicaragua and El Salvador, as well as on international waters.

MarViva estimates that 70 percent of the dome is outside of the jurisdiction of any country, and the organisation’s director general, Jiménez, argues that what is needed is a joint effort and shared responsibility. Mission Blue and other organisations concur.

“It is a regional matter, and all Central American countries should work together, because part of the dome is on the high seas, outside of their jurisdictions. This is like the Wild West. It’s disturbing because there are no controls or protection out there,” Kip Evans, Mission Blue’s director of expeditions and photography, told Tierramérica.

But the government stressed that the nucleus of the dome is under its jurisdiction. “Historically it has been called the Costa Rican Dome and the nucleus is in Costa Rican waters. What we know as the Thermal Convection Dome is off the coast of the north of the country, not Central America,” Mora told Tierramérica.

But the deputy minister and his team do agree with MarViva and other non-governmental organisations on the need for regional cooperation. Costa Rica forms part of the Organisation of Fisheries and Aquaculture for the Isthmus of Central America (OSPESCA), where it works together with bodies like the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Carpenter Antonio Gutiérrez organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in the Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

The lack of markets to supply raw materials for Cuba’s new private sector, along with the poverty in isolated rural communities, is fuelling the poaching of endangered species of flora and fauna.

In 2010, the socialist government of Raúl Castro gave the green light to private enterprise in a limited number of activities, mainly in the services sector.

But without wholesale markets to supply the 455,000 “cuentapropistas” – officially registered self-employed people – unforeseen phenomena soon appeared, like the rise in poaching and illegal logging.

Forests, which cover just under 29 percent of the territory of this Caribbean island nation, are suffering the consequences.

“You can get a permit to work as a carpenter, but it’s hard to get the raw materials,” Antonio Gutiérrez, a carpenter who works at a sawmill in the Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest Caribbean island wetland, told Tierramérica. “You can also build more homes, or upgrade homes. People need boards, windows, everything…and to solve the problem they go into the bush and cut.”

Last year, the forest ranger corps levied 19,993 fines for a total of 125,000 dollars, and seized 2,274 metres of wood. Although there are no statistics on wood confiscated in previous years, the authorities say illegal logging is on the rise.

“That’s confiscated mahogany and oak,” said Gutiérrez, 48, pointing to a pile of thin tree trunks on the ground. “Those trees had a lot of growing to do to become real logs.”

He maintained that more wood should be sold to people in order to safeguard forests from illegal logging.

The Agriculture Ministry’s forestry director, Isabel Rusó, told the press in March that the law in effect since 1998 provides for fines that are not effective in dissuading illegal logging. She also said private businesses either have to face a sea of red tape to purchase wood from state-owned companies or buy wood on the black market.

A new forestry bill is to be introduced in parliament in 2015.

But the problems are not only limited to the country’s forests.

Last year, the authorities confiscated 1,696 boats and registered 2,959 cases of illegal fishing – up from 1,987 in 2011 and just 996 in 2012.

In the western province of Pinar del Río, which has rich nature reserves, over two tonnes of poached sea turtles were seized, most of which belonged to endangered or threatened species.

In addition, 219 simple fishing boats were confiscated, and fines were levied for the use of banned fishing techniques, the capture of protected or toxic species, and vandalism against state fishing companies, among other offences.

The capture of the loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) “is indiscriminate because it is done at night and the females are often on their way to lay their eggs in the sand,”
Pedro Fernández, a 62-year-old bricklayer from Havana who has been a hobby fisherman for four decades, told Tierramérica.

“The turtles are killed and cleaned, and the waste is dumped at sea,” he added. “Because of the way things are done, it’s hard to control and assess the real magnitude of the problem,” said Fernández, who added that he had never fished illegally.

He said that to catch the turtles, the fishermen place net traps at the bottom of the sea for a month or more.

From May to September, loggerhead turtles, green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) lay their eggs on Cuba’s beaches.

Many of the beaches are protected areas, such as the ones in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago, the San Felipe keys, the Largo del Sur key, the Isle of Youth (Cuba’s second-biggest island), and the Guanahacabibes peninsula in Pinar del Río.

But that doesn’t stop the poachers. Nor do the stiff penalties against poaching or the strict police controls.

The meat of different animals and fish and seafood sell for astronomical prices on the black market. One kilo of loggerhead sea turtle or crocodile meat fetches between five and seven dollars.

The average salary of a state employee – the government still employs roughly 80 percent of the workforce – is the equivalent of 19 dollars a month. But some Cubans have other sources of income, and can afford such forbidden luxuries.

In this business, however, not everyone is always lucky. A young man from Havana returned last month from a trip to Pinar del Río, 160 km west of Havana, with empty hands, after making the journey to buy loggerhead turtle steaks.

“No fisherman sold me anything,” the young man, who occasionally sells prohibited foods,” told IPS. “People buy up this soft, tasty protein-rich meat really quickly.”

Poaching and illegal logging are increasing along Cuba’s coasts and in its forests, mangroves, swamps and marshes – even in the country’s 103 protected areas.

The damage caused by poaching endangered species is the most visible face of the illegal hunting, fishing and logging in this country, which has 1,163 endangered species of animals and 848 endangered species of plants.

The shrinking populations of manatees, dolphins, crocodiles, caimans, green and loggerhead sea turtles, pirarucu, black coral, queen conch, parrots, and the multicoloured polymita land snail are all targeted by poachers.

Generally, poachers are men, although women take part in transporting and selling the products.

The authorities are beefing up oversight and inspection, to prevent international smuggling as well, while stepping up environmental education.

“But alternatives must be found to boost the development of populations that live near or inside the nature reserves,” Carlos Rojas, the manager of the Laguna Guanaroca-Gavilanes protected area, told Tierramérica.

In the nature reserve, located 11 km from city of Cienfuegos in southeast Cuba, which depends on both tourism and fishing, poaching has been reduced “due to fear of the law, but not because there’s environmental consciousness,” he said.

“Educational programmes help, but we see that people still feel like they have the right to fish. The bans cause conflicts when it comes to how they make a living,” Rojas added.

One positive step in his administration was to increase the number of people from neighbouring communities on the reserve’s payroll. But Rojas lamented that a project for sustainable fishing had never been implemented. And he said ecotourism would be another path to environmentally-friendly local livelihoods.

Demand is the main driver of poaching of fish and seafood in the reserve’s lagoon, he said. And there are newer, growing phenomena, like collectors, or the lack of markets providing supplies for the private sector, he added.

“Permits were issued for making crafts and selling food, but no one knows where some of the things that are sold came from,” he cautioned.

Two years ago, the non-governmental Cuban Association of Artists and Artisans adopted restrictive measures for those who sold crafts made with coral or shells from vulnerable species.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Waves and high tides are eating away at the beaches in Costa Rica’s Cahuita National Park, where the vegetation is uprooted and washed into the sea. Credit: Diego Arguedas/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
CAHUITA NATIONAL PARK, Costa Rica , Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

The critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle has few sanctuaries left in the world, and this is one of them. But in 2012 only 53 nests were counted on the beaches of this national park in Costa Rica. And there is an enemy that conservation efforts can’t fight: the beaches themselves are shrinking.

For centuries, the over eight km of beaches in Cahuita have provided a nesting ground for four species of sea turtle: the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), and the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata).

But the erosion of the sand and the rising sea level have reduced the size of their breeding grounds and the number of turtles who come to lay their eggs in this national park in the southeast Costa Rican province of Limón after migrating across the Caribbean sea.

“Many turtles now go to the beaches outside the park, in places we have no control over, which makes them more vulnerable,” the park administrator Mario Cerdas told IPS.

In the three years he has run the park, Cerdas has seen a drop in the numbers of turtles coming to nest.

The Cahuita National Park covers 1,100 hectares of land on a swampy peninsula and 23,000 hectares of ocean, including the country’s most important coral reef.

It was created in 1970 as a national monument, and in 1978 was declared a park to protect the fragile ecosystems.

The turtles’ change of destination, to beaches outside the park, is not the only concern. In sea turtles, gender is determined by the temperature of the sand on the nesting beaches, with cool beaches producing more males and warm beaches more females.

As a result of climate change, heat is increasing in Central America, which means that more females than males are born.

“This could be acceptable for the population up to a certain point, but if the gender ratio gap becomes too big, there could be problems,” said Borja Heredia, a scientist with the secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS).

And this is just one of hundreds of cases where climate change is affecting migratory species.

Drought in Africa is hindering the journey that millions of birds undertake every year across the Sahara desert; polar bears are finding it more and more difficult to find food; and global warming has modified the migratory routes of the monarch butterfly.

Scientists and government officials from around the world met Apr. 9-11 in Guácimo, Limón to study these effects and find solutions.

The workshop was organised by a CMS working group on climate change, made up of experts from more than 20 countries.

“What we are looking at is how to tackle climate change and the impact on migrant species, and that can be whales, it can be turtles, it can be birds, it can be invertebrates,” Colin Galbraith, head of the working group, and the CMS Conference of Parties appointed councillor for climate change, told IPS.

The team is to deliver a report in early May to the 120 states parties to the Convention. In June, the CMS’s scientific committee will evaluate it. After that, the next step would be to receive the approval of the Conference of the Parties in November in Quito, Ecuador.

Because climate change is expected to bring different changes to different regions, protecting species that migrate through the various regions presents an unprecedented challenge.

Manmade national borders do not mean anything to animals, which is why the CMS aims to create an international system of conservation areas to protect them on their migratory routes.

Galbraith told IPS that the report will focus on three main areas.

“Pulling information together and putting it into a plan to develop information and data sharing; how can we adapt to climate change but then also how can we help different countries build capacity; and how can we communicate this to the wider world,” said the head of the working group.

In March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed the fragility of the world’s ecosystems to global warming, in the second volume of its 5th Assessment Report on Climate Change, which focuses on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.

In coastal zones, the rising sea level is endangering habitats like coral reefs, wetlands and nesting beaches.

In Cahuita, for example, up to one-quarter of the beaches have been lost in 15 years, according to Cerdas. During the last high tide event, the water reached the park ranger’s wooden house, which is located 100 metres from the high tide line.

“Migratory animals face many of the same challenges that humans do: having to choose when to travel, what route to take, where to eat and rest, and how long to stay before returning home,” CMS Executive Secretary Bradnee Chambers wrote in a column published by IPS.

“Unfortunately, these choices that are seemingly so trivial for humans are life-or-death decisions for migratory animals,” he added.

The report by the working group that met last week in Costa Rica will also be taken into consideration by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, in an effort to generate multidisciplinary knowledge.

“The different environment-related conventions have to start to look each other in the eye and work together more, cooperating with resources and research,” said Max Andrade, head of the public policy unit in the under-secretariat on climate change in Ecuador’s environment ministry.

Ecuador will seek to put a spotlight on global warming, as host to the next Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS COP11), Andrade said.

The decision to create the working group on climate change was reached at the last meeting, held in Norway three years ago.