This article is a translation of a Mongabay news.
When the nesting season approaches, Claudia Flores explains the process to the children: go to the river early in the morning, find the turtle nests, locate and collect the eggs. The challenge is to beat the predators. Place the collection on a tray and separate those that have a chance to hatch. Take them to the artificial beach and plant them in the afternoon, always with sunlight. Label them and wait about 70 days. Gather the hatchlings, feed them for two weeks, and release them into the river. It's all cyclical. The children listen attentively.
“The children are very attentive when we’re planting and even more so when the eggs are hatching; they’re with their trays counting little taricayas,” says the indigenous leader of the Huitoto people in the Peruvian Amazon. “We won't be here forever, but they will stay and carry on the experience and the tradition of planting this species every year, which is nearing its end.”
Protecting the eggs of taricaya turtles (Podocnemis unifilis) from predators—both natural and human—has been her job since 2017. This takes place in the community of Tres Esquinas, located in the Putumayo River basin in the Loreto region on the Peru-Colombia border. The village is made up of ten families—just over 40 people—living in an area affected by illegal fishing.
In this Amazon region, the taricaya has been heavily pressured for decades by overconsumption—of both its eggs and meat—severely impacting its populations and driving it nearly to extinction in places where it was once common.
“We’ve released an average of 5,500 little hatchlings over the past five years, because there are seasons when not many taricayas come up, so we plant few. It would be nice to have many more, but we’re a small community and others are bigger; we gather the ones they leave,” says Flores about her team's efforts: five women and five men from her community who have taken on the tough task of repopulating the river with turtles.
The Taricayas and the Fight to Save Them
The taricaya is an aquatic turtle that has been classified as Vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) since 1996. It’s also protected by Peruvian law through a supreme decree, and in 2009, it was included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
The taricaya inhabits large Amazonian rivers. The National Environmental Information System (SINIA) describes it as a medium-sized turtle. Adult females can grow up to 48 cm, while males reach a maximum of 37 cm. Females are heavier, weighing up to 12 kg, compared to males who weigh around 4 kg. Their shells are arched and oval-shaped, with darkish colors. However, the species' most distinctive feature is its brightly yellow-marked face.
“The taricayas are round, and we keep them in trays for about 15 days until their little shells harden, because if we don’t wait, big fish will eat them,” explains Flores. “But we have a special, strategic pond connected to the river where there’s plenty of food, and that’s where we release them.”
As of August 2022, Flores’ team had accumulated around 600 more taricaya hatchlings to be released while they await the next nesting in December. Claudia Flores’ hope is largely that the released hatchlings will reach reproductive age at six years, so she’s confident the population will increase in the medium and long term.
In 2022, Claudia Flores was selected to participate in the Amazonia Indigenous Women's Fellowship Program of Conservation International. The goal—just as it is with other indigenous women leaders chosen—is to enhance their skills and develop initiatives related to environmental conservation and climate change, while generating economic income and revitalizing their culture through socio-environmental solutions based on their ancestral knowledge. Now, she has access to funding and mentoring support, as well as training and guidance.
Her project, besides ensuring the survival of the turtles, aims to make use of non-viable or unfertilized eggs, which have become part of the families’ diet, and eventually, she hopes to find a market where they can sell them to supplement their income through sustainable activity.
“Of the collected eggs, a percentage has a fertility rate. According to data from 2018 to 2020, it's around 63%,” explains Walter Oscanoa, technical senior coordinator of the Loreto landscape at Conservation International. “That means a little over half of the collected eggs will hatch and be released to help increase the population that had greatly diminished in the Putumayo. The other percentage is what we aim to utilize, and so far, the main market for these eggs seems to be in El Estrecho, the district capital of Putumayo.”
Oscanoa adds that there are three communities working on projects similar to the one in Tres Esquinas, with the goal of increasing efforts to repopulate taricayas in collaboration with the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP) and the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS).
“All the little eggs with a crown—a small white spot on top—are selected because they’re viable; those are the ones we plant,” Flores explains. “The ones without, we use. I think that later we’ll have a market for these eggs, which will benefit our community; the situation is tough because we’re so far from the state.”
Flores adds that her community mainly relies on fishing—she’s the treasurer of the Local Association of Artisanal Fishers—because their land is flood-prone, and the excessive water often hinders small-scale agriculture. According to the leader, climate change has become evident: winters leave them with nothing—it can last three to four months during which important crops like bananas and yucca become scarce—and summers are too intense.
“We have an arawana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) fry fishing organization, we have our management plan, and there are always problems with offenders, but we protect our waters for years to sustainably use our fry, as we’re an organized group.”
Illegal fishing has compromised the food security of the community, as people depend on resources from the Putumayo River. That’s why Claudia Flores insists the taricaya turtle repopulation project must continue—not only to rehabilitate the species’ natural cycle but also to improve local nutrition.
“Illegal fishing has been an issue for many years, and that’s why we protect our ponds (in the river) so that offenders don’t come from elsewhere; the animals keep diminishing every year, and that’s why we have a management plan to preserve arowanas and collect taricaya eggs so they can reproduce,” adds the leader.
Hope
Claudia Flores’ work is significant, says Walter Oscanoa of Conservation International, because she has made it a collective effort. “She symbolizes the indigenous woman leader of Putumayo, who believes in conservation to the point that she has directed her work and project towards strengthening a sustainable activity while also empowering women who now have an additional task that contributes to the family economy,” explains the specialist.
Claudia Flores’ artificial beaches have become learning spaces. These boxes made of long wooden planks and filled with beach sand are classrooms for the entire community. Her message is to reiterate the value of caring for and conserving species that are part of the territory.
“It’s important for the children to see how this management is done so they’re motivated to continue helping this species that is already nearing its end,” concludes Claudia Flores. “They’re learning that these are living beings that need care and to reproduce. I tell my children that when the taricaya hatchlings come out of their eggs, no one protects them; they’re all alone. I always tell them, from a young age, that we live off nature, and that’s why we must take care of it.”