Guarding Matura Beach's Leatherbacks

Nature Seekers began as a small community effort to stop the open slaughter of nesting leatherback turtles on Matura Beach and has since driven nightly poaching down from 30 percent to zero. Rangers now patrol the 8.8-kilometer beach through the March-to-August nesting season, tag and weigh turtles, relocate at-risk nests to artificial hatcheries, and run eco-tours that fund the work while employing local residents. Across two recent seasons the group logged 8,766 nests and observed 2,136 individual turtles, relocating 27 at-risk nests that produced 664 hatchlings, and it helped found the Turtle Village Trust in 2006 to spread the model to other Trinidad and Tobago communities.