Summary of Turtle Rescue Season 2020
To kick off Turtle Rescue Season 2021, we proudly present to you a summary of last year's successful rescue season at the Tapiche Jungle Reserve in the northern Amazon of Peru.
First and most importantly, we the team of the Tapiche Jungle Reserve with all our local staff and all the jungle inhabitants want to thank all of you for your support throughout the past year. The pandemic hit us, as so many small operations, very hard, and we were left without any active income from the time we closed the reserve to visitors in March 2020. Despite all the unfortunate circumstances, we were able to save a record number of turtle eggs in 2020 and released the healthiest and strongest river turtles yet into their new jungle lives at the reserve. This demanding, labor-intense work would not have been possible without all your support! We are so grateful for all of our Tapiche family and friends all over the world who have helped us through last year and who have given us the motivation and strength we needed to carry on our conservation work. Thank you!
In the Turtle Nesting Season 2020, we found a record high of 9,158 turtle eggs in 241 nests. The majority of the nests were from the Yellow-spotted River Turtles (podocnemis unifilis): we found 231 nests with a total of 8,532 eggs of this species. We found 5 nests of the Six-tubercled River Turtles (podocnemis sextuberculata) for a total of 91 eggs of this species. We've observed from previous years that the Six-tubercled River Turtles generally only make their nests on the beaches that come out towards the end of the turtle season, when the water level is at its very lowest. Last year, the water level did not go down enough to reveal those preferred beaches, which we think might have kept some Six-tubercled River Turtles from nesting in 2020. The biggest and locally most elusive of our turtle species, the Arrau Turtle (podocnemis expansa), lays nests of over 100 eggs. In "just" four nests we found 535 Arrau Turtle eggs. The very first time we found nests of the Arrau Turtle at the Tapiche Jungle Reserve was only the previous year in 2019 with a total of two nests, so finding four nests in 2020 made us really proud; we saw it as validation and a result of our passionate conservation efforts in this area.
During the past years we have been able to improve and perfect our nest-building technique when rebuilding the nests in a safe environment in front of the lodge. Because of that, we were able to maximize the turtle hatching rate and nurture very strong hatchlings. We were able to release a total of 8000 healthy and strong turtle hatchlings, of which 7750 were Yellow-spotted, 50 were Six-tubercled and 200 were Arrau Turtles. Unfortunately, two of the nests of the Arrau Turtle nests were in an incubation box that was affected by the underground ant attack. You can read back more information about the ant attack and Tapiche's first published scientific paper in our post from April 12, 2021.
We hope to avoid ant attacks this year by placing a deeper underground wood structure around the hatchery. The ants move around in tunnels through the ground and the wooden structure will hopefully prevent them from invading the incubation boxes like they did last year. We will also fill all of the incubation boxes with soft sand from the beaches, which may impair the ants' tunneling attempts. In 2020, we had built one incubation box with more solid soil to recreate the natural muddy and dense nesting environment of the river shores where some of the Yellow-spotted River Turtles make their nests--while we find many nests on sandy beaches, we also find nests constructed in the mud. However, the boxes filled with the soft sand had better hatching rates and were not as affected by the ant attack as the hatching box with the more solid ground. So we have learned that even though we replicated a natural nesting environment with the muddy nesting material, the soft sand produces the best results in our hatchery. We observe and learn new things about the turtles each year, and we are constantly improving our rescue methods and operations in order to give as many of them as possible a chance at a wild, natural life at the Tapiche Jungle Reserve.
If you would like to support the Turtle Rescue Project as well as all the incredible inhabitants of the Tapiche Reserve, our GoFundMe https://gofund.me/472e0a00 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 sending jungle love to all!
