seaturtle.org :
MTN :
ARCHIVES :
Sign In
Marine Turtle Newsletter 105:18, © 2004
“Saving the Sea Turtle” Festival: Uruguay
Antonia Bauzá, Melisa Morales & Isabel Lopez
CID/Karumbé, Tortugas Marinas del Uruguay, J. Paullier 1198/101, 11200 Montevideo, Uruguay, (E-mail:karumbe@adinet.com.uy, <http://www.karumbe.8k.com>)
The first festival entitled “Saving the Sea Turtle” was held at the locality of “La Coronilla”, in Rocha, Uruguay, from March 29th to April 4th 2004. Karumbé has been working in this locality since 2002, focused in the monitoring of the local juvenile green turtle population, always promoting the participation and involvement of local people. The activities undertaken during the event included educational workshops for almost 100 secondary school students, emphasizing data collection methodologies, tagging procedures, species identification keys and telemetry. Lectures, games and mural painting were organized for children from 3 to 8 years old; and a drawing contest for primary school students was performed, whose winners will be included in the 2005 Karumbé calendar (for online photograph see <https://seaturtle.org/cgi-bin/imagelib/index.pl?photo=864>). During the fourth day of the Festival, a juvenile green turtle was tagged and released in the presence of 250 children of the local school (For online photograph see <https://seaturtle.org/cgi-bin/imagelib/index.pl?photo=1144>). Over the weekend a Treasure Hunt and a Soccer Championship were performed with the children of the community. On the last day of the festival, a sea turtle cake contest took place involving the women of the community. The party and awards ceremony for the winners took place at the closing day of the festival. Local people felt that the Festival was a very positive event. The children demonstrated an incredible level of interest and joy while participating in festival activities. Not only the children but their families and other local inhabitants were both involved and demonstrated increasing awareness regarding conservation goals. The generation of a tight bond between the local community and outside conservation team members cannot be underestimated. The Festival was only possible thanks to all the Karumbé team and the support of CONAPROLE (National Cooperative of Milk Products), People Trust for Endangered Species, PADI Foundation, Project Aware Foundation and British Petroleum Conservation Programme.