Lots of inspiring climate news has been coming from Costa Rica in recent years. In the past 30 years, it has more than doubled its rainforest cover thanks to restricting logging permits and the forestry commission’s foundation to safeguard the forests. Since 2015, the Central American country has generated all but 1% of its electricity from renewable sources such as its volcanoes, rivers, solar, and wind power. Last year, it established a ban on Styrofoam with hefty fines for those who defy and made plans to be plastic-free by 2021.
Now there’s some more good news! A biologist team has been tracking sea turtle egg poachers with lookalike eggs with a built-in GPS tracker. Sea turtles are endangered, yet people continue to slaughter them for their meat, skin, and shell, while others steal the eggs out of nests for consumption. In addition to the threat of poaching and over-exploitation, the poor animals also face accidental capture in fishing gear, habitat destruction, and rising sand temperatures affecting the eggs because of climate change. Because of all this, almost every sea turtle species are classified as endangered, with nearly half of them being critically endangered.
The egg poachers are the worst. They destroy over 90% of all sea turtle nests on Central American beaches every year! It’s illegal, so the people have to smuggle them into cities where bars and restaurants sell them to customers to be eaten as a delicacy. Private residences buy them as well. These smugglers have the upper hand because they know where law enforcement is and how to avoid it. So, a team of conservationists came up with an idea to expose these scoundrels.
The group, called Paso Pacifico, developed a GPS-GSM tracking device called InvestEGGator, which mimics real sea turtle eggs’ look and feel to trace poaching routes. Lead conservation scientist, Kim Williams-Guillén, developed the initial prototypes with her 3D printer and software, then had special effects make-up artist Lauren Wilde paint the printed eggs to look indistinguishable from real sea turtle eggs.
These InvestEGGators are placed into sea turtle nests. When poachers go and snatch up all the eggs, they get hauled along for the ride, exposing smuggling routes in real-time. Paso Pacifico is working with authorities to dismantle egg trafficking using the information they get from the InvestEGGators. The process and safety of the eggs in nature are being documented. A research paper was published outlining their findings so far.
Helen Pheasey of the University of Kent, who was the lead author in the study on how the eggs work, said:
Our research showed that placing a decoy into a turtle nest did not damage the incubating embryos and that the decoys work. We showed that it was possible to track illegally removed eggs from the beach to end consumers, as shown by our longest track, which identified the entire trade chain covering 137 kilometers.
While some eggs went far, the majority of them remained in the local area. Pheasey said:
Knowing that a high proportion of eggs remain in the local area helps us target our conservation efforts. We can now focus our efforts on raising awareness in the local communities and direct law enforcement to this local issue. It also means we know where the consumers are, which assists us in focusing on demand reduction campaigns.
Paso Pacifico and the University of Kent researchers hope that more sea turtle projects in other countries will also use the decoys on their nesting beaches. They also plan to work with Costa Rican scientists to adapt the technique for tracking the illegal wildlife trade of other animals, such as shipments of shark fins and the theft of eggs from parrot nests.
They believe that we can save marine species and other animals from extinction if we all work together. Suppose you are interested in joining the fight or donating, click here.
