A Unique Mission
Founder and Project Manager Laura Exley, who cofounded COPROT in August of 2018 alongside biologist Katya Barrantes Salas, when asked what inspired her to start the project, said, “[Page//Katya and I] identified that there was already turtle conservation work being done on the peninsula, but it was kind of all over the place, not very consistent or sustainable. And there were lots of people looking for other forms of income, especially people that were involved with gold mining.”
Then in early 2018, another organization decided to pull the plug on its own sea turtle project, effectively turning over a half-built sea turtle hatchery to the community. But, without proper funding or training, the community’s efforts to maintain an ongoing sea turtle conservation and hatchery project were quickly in a state of jeopardy.
“It was actually a number of people from the gold mining community that approached me,” says Exley. “Gold mining is just not that profitable anymore, and it’s hard work and dangerous, and I think they were looking for something else.”
Exley had spent the last three years working with the international organization Frontier on a sea turtle project on the Osa, and their work had been noticed by the community.
With a hatchery already in progress and individuals from the community expressing interest in working on a sea turtle project, “everything just kind of fell into place,” says Exley.
Within a few months, permits were applied for and received, and work began in earnest to complete construction of the hatchery and begin the hard work of collecting data on the nesting sea turtles of this very ecologically important stretch of beach.
“The mission of the project was to provide training and employment opportunities to individuals in the community who would otherwise be exploiting natural resources, or those who were vulnerable to getting to that point… So, lower-income families and people with limited resources,” says Exley. Local staff was trained in how to conduct beach surveys for nesting sea turtles, collect science data, and in extreme cases, relocate vulnerable nests.