Connecting Conservation and Communities: Eco-tourism development in rural Nicaragua by Cristina Murillo Barrick

It is midnight in the tropics; the clang of the ceiling fan is not an entirely discomforting rhythm, the cicadas and frogs are engaged in their warm-aired serenade and I cannot sleep.  Tomorrow I will take a bus to Managua and begin in-country work on my UC Davis Blum Grant. It is hard not to be nervous when you care about something. The birth of this project can be traced back to November in 2009, when I volunteered for a month in rural Ostional, Nicaragua teaching English lessons to a youth guide group by day and patrolling beaches at night in search of sea turtles.

A picture of myself (front far right) and the 2009 guide group in Ostional, Nicaragua. Upon returning in 2016 I was able to reconnect with several members, two pictured here, Marvin (front far left) and Irvin (front, middle) attended the Eco-tourism Training Workshop in August.

        The guide group officially dissolved a few years back, but interest in receiving formalized eco-tourism training and using this to increase employment opportunities is a subject of enthusiastic interest among community members and organizations alike. The Eco-Tourism Workshop I am designing seeks to draw upon this desire by positioning the course as the first step toward forming a local guide co-operative.

In order to do this, I am drawing on connections within the community of Ostional, with allied conservation non-profit Paso Pacifico and internationally acclaimed Costa Rican National Park members of the Biology Education Program.  

  

This trifecta is unified by a desire to tackle the challenges of conservation and development, and my mission is to do this in a way that is participatory, engaged and empowering. My Blum PASS Grant proposal has three audacious objectives:

• Increase employment opportunities by training eco-tourism guides

• Research and design micro-entrepreneurial land management projects to protect wildlife and draw in eco-tourism

• Provide fundamental knowledge essential to sustainable development

       I expect these will evolve as I hit the ground, but I do believe these are important and achievable feats. Now, before we get into it there are a few things you should know about Nicaragua, the La Flor Wildlife Refuge and Ostional:

• Nicaragua is considered one of the world’s most impoverished nations; the United Nation’s Human Development Index characterizes it as Low Development, ranked the 125^th (out of 175 countries) in the world1.

• But Nicaragua is also very rich. In human capacity: it has an overwhelmingly youthful population. In biodiversity: it contains enormous numbers of species, many of them migrate through the narrow stretch of land called the Isthmus, and over a quarter of its forest is protected2. And it is safe: with one of the lowest incidences of violence in all of the Americas.

• San Juan del Sur is one of Nicaragua’s most popular tourist destinations. As such it is a source of potential income, a mere twenty kilometers away from La Flor Wildlife Refuge, it is one of less than a dozen places in the world where the Oliver Ridley sea turtle nests in the thousands (known as arribadas).

Once the project hit the ground there was a great deal of collaboration, checking-in with staff about local needs. Here with Paso Pacifico staff, Jarington at Finca Mono (Spider Monkey) Farm, an education and research site, after planting trees with local Junior Rangers.

 Ostional is in many ways a typical example of rural Nicaragua: people wake early to labor in the fields and on the sea, cook, bathe babies in the outdoor pilas (cement sinks), send the little ones in their navy blue and white uniforms to school after their cup of coffee.

A common Nicaraguan scene, woman prepares food over wood fire while chickens scuttle along. I learned many people have a profound appreciation of the natural world that surrounds them, and often mention conserving endemic plant and animal species when asked about desirable development.

            In this coastal fishing village the men leave with their mesh bags and hooked spears to look for octopus or pargo (a kind of fish) and women collect oysters on the beach. There is sporadic electricity and reliably inconsistent water, no grey water treatment to speak of, untidy pigs, chickens and scrawny dogs roam through town freely. There is litter everywhere, although it is occasionally swept up and burned, giving off an acid-smelling smoke. 

Neighboring San Juan del Sur is a mere 26 kilometers from Ostional and a bustling tourist destination with sought after white sand beaches and clear blue waters. The proximity of of Ostional to one of Nicaragua’s most popular tourist destination makes eco-tourism a promising option to development in the area.

        I’ve written a proposal, the funding is sitting ready to work in a bank account, I have flown to Central America, I have checked in with my community partners every step of the way and am about to be reunited with several long-unseen friends. It’s moments like these when you know you have done everything you can to prepare, but the butterflies still keep you up. All I have left is to jump in.

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1 Human Development Reports, Nicaragua. United Nations Development Programme, 2016. Web. 12 March, 2016 htttp://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/NIC