Turtle Nest Rescues Underway at San Pancho’s Grupo Ecológico Frank Smith - Grupo Ecológico Costa Verde
June 2, 2023

June first began the first day of looking for nests, if a nest is found it will be move to a safer location, out of the reach of waves and away from lights.

The reconstruction of the box nursery occurs once every seven years, or three times to date since the nursery was moved off the beach and rebuilt in my yard in 2002 after Hurricane Kena. Today the primary reason for reconstruction is the replacement of the black plastic covering, which completely encases the box nursery and helps keep it at the right temperature for incubating hatchlings. Unfortunately, once we removed the old plastic covering, we discovered extensive termite damage to the wooden frame of the nursery, about 3 to 7% of the entire structure.

Replacing the plastic cover is an easy six-day task. On the other hand, the replacement of termite-damaged wood was a very different story. First, we had to identify the termite damage, which was tricky since the termites can’t digest paint, and so they remain hidden under the painted surface. Finding the damaged wood can take many weeks. After four trips to the lumber yard and at the cost of around 10,000 pesos, we replaced the necessary lumber and plastic covering, plus four cans of paint and two boxes of wood screws.

After all the new pieces were cut to size, painted and dried, they were inserted to replace the old pieces. The nursery was then leveled and the new plastic cover reinstalled. The final task is cleaning, repairing and placing 330 nest boxes and moving them back onto the shelves. Note, in addition to all the damage to the mursery's wood frame, 58 feet of shelving (1” by 8” boards) was also destroyed by termites. The entire job took a month, but it's a big win for us. Thankfully we only need to do this once every few years.

Our Adopt a Sea Turtle Nest program is off to a great start! We have already raised $868.00 towards our $7,500 goal. We want to thank everyone that has generously participated in the program so far.

This is a great gift opportunity for the turtle or nature lover in your life. Nests can also be adopted “in memory of” someone or on behalf of a company. Thank you for helping us reach our fundraising goals!

Here's exciting news for all our donors; Grupo Ecológico has applied for charity status with the IRS in the USA, and has partnered with an existing US charity, Travler.org. This means that starting now, you can take a US tax deduction on donations to Grupo Ecológico! We can also offer US corporations and foundations tax exemption on their grants and contributions to Grupo Ecológico.

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