Community involvement works where enforcement fails

Article published in PEERJ that shows how community based management generates conservation success for Amazonian river turtles.

Community involvement works where enforcement fails: conservation success through community-based management of Amazon river turtle nests.

Illegal harvesting of eggs remains a major threat to the conservation of endangered Amazonian river turtles. In the Brazilian State of Amapá an innovative community based management approach reversed unsustainable harvest rates (75% nest removal) to levels (26%) that are likely to maintain populations i.e. inverted the status quo where the majority of nests were harvested to a situation where the majority of nests were conserved.

Our findings suggest that the widely adopted use of law enforcement patrols as a nest protection strategy have little effect on river turtle nest harvesting. During years with extensive enforcement patrols by environmental police the nest harvest rates remained at unsustainably high levels of 61%. In the absence of law enforcement patrols the community involvement in protecting the river turtles nests temporarily against natural predators was a way that community members could actively participate not only in caring for the turtle nests but also the surrounding environment. As nest harvesting by humans was not specifically targeted these actions had general support and conflicts were not generated.

Norris D, Michalski F, Gibbs JP. (2018) Community involvement works where enforcement fails: conservation success through community-based management of Amazon river turtle nests. PeerJ 6:e4856 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4856