Releasing 2020's Rescued Baby Turtles
Are you ready to welcome some positive jungle energy into your home? We at the Tapiche Reserve invite you to enjoy these adorable turtle hatchlings of the 2020 Turtle Rescue season being released into the Tapiche river in the Northern Amazon of Peru. Throughout the last months, a new generation of thousands of healthy baby turtles made their way into a life of freedom at the Tapiche Jungle Reserve.
The turtle rescue season of 2020 was very challenging for the team at Tapiche. Our on-site managerial team of two at the lodge worked incessantly and went unsalaried in order to aggregate funds to pay local staff, but it wasn't enough. We were only able to add a couple of salaried local staff thanks to support from our GoFundMe campaign. With no volunteers or guests for additional support, the Turtle Rescue Project required extra dedication and energy from the few people we had on site.
In 'normal times,' guests and volunteers would help us rescue the turtle nests and care for the turtle hatchlings. Guest involvement also helps to boost morale and inspire the Tapiche team. Our local staff members in particular really appreciate seeing the spark of delight and discovery in guests' eyes when finding a turtle nest and watching how carefully guests retrieve the eggs from the nests and re-bury them at the lodge. The learning experience is mutually beneficial as guests learn about the turtles and the ecosystem and locals are encouraged by the care, admiration and enthusiasm of visitors. The locals are really proud to share the results of their conservation work with guests, and we consider this to be a significant step towards establishing a conservation consciousness in a region where the dominant attitude has been to regard the turtles and their eggs simply as a commercial commodity. Whereas before the locals would only see value in collecting the turtles and their eggs to sell on the black market, now our local staff sees value in conserving the turtle species, a concept supported by the salaries we provide for conservation work and reinforced by guest participation and interactions.
We released most of the turtles on the beach in front of the lodge and inside of the lagoons of the Tapiche Reserve. Between December 2020 and February 2021, we released a total of 8000 hatchlings, the strongest and healthiest baby turtles we've released yet. Of the babies released, 7750 were Yellow-spotted River Turtles (Podocnemis unifilis), 200 were Arrau Turtles (Podocnemis expansa) and 50 were Six-tubercled River Turtles (Podocnemis sextuberculata). Starting in December with the earliest and strongest hatchlings, we released the babies in waves according to their size and health. We kept the smallest and youngest turtle hatchlings until the end of February, when the last of the babies from the 2020 rescue season swam their way into their new jungle lives.
Every single one of these adorable baby turtles was only able to swim into a life of freedom in their natural habitat because of your support, and you've helped give a new generation of all three species of Amazon river turtles a chance at life. We are very proud not only that we were able to continue our turtle rescue project during a global pandemic, but we also achieved our most successful rescue season yet. We thank everyone who has joined the Tapiche family in support of our mission to protect the jungle and promote ways for humans to live harmoniously with nature.
If you're thinking of shaking off the COVID blues and having a little adventure somewhere, we invite you to consider visiting us at the Tapiche Reserve. We'll be revving up for the 2021 turtle rescue season soon, and we expect that the first turtles will start nesting next month in June! Contact Us
If travel isn't in your plans this year but you'd still like to support us, our GoFundMe gf.me/u/x92tzd will remain open, and funds will be used to sustain operations and pay local staff since we still don't have a stable tourism income.
Thanks and jungle love to all!