Now let your mind wander to a nice tropical beach vacation.
What are some of the activities do you think of doing? Snorkeling? Scuba
diving? Swimming with the dolphins or catching a glimpse of a giant sea turtle?
Planning our trip, I stumbled across a couple companies in
PV that offered wildlife excursions that were wildlife friendly. What does that
mean? Well, if you wanted to swim with dolphins, you are typically going to
swim with captive dolphins, where they have limited swimming area and are
trained to interact with people. Based on the numerous documentaries, TV
specials, and news articles recently, we know that at the best, this isn’t a
natural state for marine life, and at the worst, the animals are treated
cruelly to be submissive.
With a wildlife-friendly or eco excursion, you are going to
interact with free wildlife in a more educated, respectful, and natural
setting. Using dolphins again as an example, you would visit an area that is
known to have a local pod, and get an opportunity to swim in the same area, but
not necessarily hold on for a ride. With eco excursions you are also likely to
get some information about the animals, conservation efforts, and be led by
experts; our tour guides were marine biologists.
The tour we went on included two parts: First, we went to an
estuary. This is a swampy area where the river meets the ocean, and is a rich
land for birds, crocodiles, and more. This particular estuary is protected – it
was previously 3 times the size, but developers build hotels and condos over
it. Our tour was not only educational, beautiful, and a good photo opp for
birds, but it also contributes to the saving of this eco-system, which is
mostly privately funded. The estuary also included a crocodile hatchery.
This is a conservation project as crocodiles lay their eggs
on land and have a lot of natural predators in addition to humans. Bringing the
eggs to the estuary allows for a safe and monitored hatching, and gets them out
of, for example, the golf club sand pits.
The second part of the tour was to a turtle camp. Similar to
the crocodiles, sea turtles need some volunteer assistance to protect their
eggs from natural and human predators. At this turtle camp, the volunteers retrieve
the eggs from their nests and rebury them in new nests within the camp, where
they can be monitored. When the eggs hatch, the volunteers (or tourists if
there is a visit planned) point the babies towards the ocean so they can make
it to sea. With the protection of the eggs and guidance towards the water, the
survival rate of the sea turtles from egg to adulthood has increased from
1:1000 to 1:100.
What can you do to reduce your risk of being a human predator?
- Check before eating any exotic meats or eggs if that species is on any endangered lists.
- Search for eco-friendly tours on vacations. Ours was through www.ecotoursvallarta.com and there are directories like www.ecotourdirectory.com/
- Let experts be your guide, and do not touch wildlife or take selfies until you know more.
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