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Costa Rica

Costa Rica, Jalova

Our Jalova projects in the Toreago National Park address the SDGs  Life on Land, Life below Water, and Partnerships for the Goals. 

The Marine Turtle Project assists our partners, Sea Turtle Conservancy in data collection.  We focus on adult and hatchling endangered species and protect the beach from dangers towards them. The Jalova section of Tortuguero beach saw a total of 8,497 Green Turtle nests and 25 Hawksbill nests. In total, 750 hours were spent doing nest checks during the 2019 turtle season. We also participated in over 15 beach cleans and in neighboring villages to help make a safer place for turtles and other wildlife.

Our other projects include;

  • Forest Biodiversity and Incidental Project where we aim to collect as much information about our local vertebrate species, to help better understand their ecology, population trends, and behavior. 
  • A Canal Bird Project to help monitor our unique canal ecosystem, and understand the community of birds who use this habitat to help protect it.
  • A Butterfly Project to create a species inventory of the different butterfly species that we find in our forests, to recognize the health and biodiversity of the national park. There were 837 individual observations of butterflies made in 2019 during 53 surveys.

The year 2019 was a record-breaking year in several regards, ranging from the most birds observed to most hours spent doing nest checks throughout various seasons.  Overall, 2019 saw the addition of 6 species of birds, 21 species of butterfly, 4 species of reptile, and one species of mammal to our database.