Guarding Venezuela's Last Great Hawksbill Turtle Beaches

Provita, founded in 1987, has run a community-based sea turtle conservation program in Macuro, Sucre state, since 2003, protecting hawksbill and leatherback nesting beaches along the Gulf of Paria. Nest poaching has fallen from over 88% to under 10%, as local patrollers now guard the beaches, and the project has released more than 130,000 hawksbill hatchlings to date. In March 2026 the program entered a new phase with support from Sea Turtle Inc., expanding anti-poaching patrols, in-water research and environmental education that reaches roughly 290 schoolchildren a year, evidence that grassroots conservation is still operating despite Venezuela's economic crisis.