August 1st, 2009 - Joana Hancock
SWEET AND SOUR
The past two weeks have been a roller-coaster of emotions, that went from deep sadness and frustration, to our first arrest! After recording a maximum mortality rate of 5% at one of our most complicated beaches, Lacacão for the last month, we had a nasty surprise when we found evidence of up to 9 turtles being taken from our least problematic beach, Curral Velho, in just two days. The poachers, knowing our limitations in covering effectively the full 4.5Km of beach, due to our limited number of people, took advantage of the situation and captured the turtles at the far end of the beach. Refusing to ignore this situation, our project coordinator, Christian Roder, Julio Rocha and two other members of the military set up a trap the following day, and managed to intercept the poachers, however, due to lack of evidence, had to let them go, to add to our frustration.
Nevertheless, the next night, soldiers patrolling the Lacacão beach saw some suspicious activity during their night patrol, and to their surprise, found a group of people poaching a nest! They managed to arrest one of the people, and this person is now awaiting for his sentence. We look forward to know if something will actually be done, as this would be a major step in law enforcement in Boavista. The situation is getting out of hand, as we also recorded, during this week, two more turtles killed in Canto beach. This is probably related to the religious festivities planned for the local communities this upcoming weekend. We hope that with some carefully planned patrols, we can reduce this threat during this season, and catch some more people in action, before it is too late.
Not all are bad news! We finally did our first night patrol in Boa Esperança, where so far, at least 18 turtles have been slaughtered... this was the first of hopefuly many more patrols. We are blessed that many volunteers are joining our team in August, the peak month, so we will be able to increase the cover and protection of beaches such as Boa Esperança, and maybe Varandinha, on the east coast.
Also, last sunday, with the help of the local tour operators, we organized a major clean-up event in Boa Esperança beach, where at least 500m stretch of beach were left spotless, and were probably cleaned for the first time ever, judging from the amount of bags collected!
This was a success, as lots of locals showed up, in an estimate of about 50-75 participants. It was a great day!
So, there are always things to lift up our moral!!! A sour beginning to the week, a sweet taste of good work done by the end :-)