Tortuguero Park: History

It’s a Costa Rica tourism magnet---the third most visited national park in the country.
In fact, for many, their visit is the highlight of their Costa Rica vacation experience. You see, its 22 miles of protected, black sand beaches is the largest green sea turtle sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere.

These ancient beings and their cousins, the magnificent leatherback, hawksbill, and loggerhead sea turtles, the have been nesting on its deserted beaches for millions of years.

How ancient are sea turtles? Well, think 65-75 million years ago when their giant ancestor, the Achelon sea turtle (its closest living relative is the leatherback sea turtle)---13 feet long and 16 feet across---swam the oceans.

Once, they were so plentiful in all the Seven Seas that mariners, lost in the fog, could find land by listening to the sounds of thousands of female turtles paddling towards shore to nest.

Today’s Tortuguero vacationers look at the same waters sailed by Christopher Columbus in 1503. His party came ashore a few miles south of Tortuguero and named the wilderness, Costa Rica.

Photo courtesy of coterc.org

And, certainly, his men and he captured and ate sea turtles, perhaps even collecting bags full of their eggs and making sea turtle soup.

And that’s how our history of Tortuguero Park begins---and almost ended.

With a bowl of soup: sea turtle soup.

Tortuguero Sea Turtles and Soup

Beaches nearly deserted---mile-after-mile.

Jungles everywhere, filled with wildlife from anteaters to jaguars, hundreds of species of birds, one of the most biologically intense places on the planet.

But, it’s the turtles most want to see.

Indeed, it’s only because of sea turtles that there even is a Tortuguero Park.

Few realize how close our demand for turtle soup came to exterminating the very animals that over a hundred thousand people come to see today.

Fewer still appreciate that it's the very remoteness of Tortuguero that preserved the sea turtles for eons but almost led to their annihilation in the three decades after World War II.

Now, don't misunderstand: people have eaten sea turtles since there were, well, people.

Indeed, two centuries before Julia Child, recipes for sea turtle soup were already the rage in England's cookbooks, like the 1774 classic (it's still in print!), The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy

The war brought enormous break-throughs in technology and when it ended, that mechanization, coupled with never-seen-before economic development, led to the greatest exploitation of the world's resources the planet had ever suffered.

It led sea-turtle entrepreneurs to the rich beaches off the coast of Costa Rica where it was ridiculously easy to capture lumbering female sea turtles for soup and collect their eggs for, among other things, selling them to fools (there's one born every minute) as aphrodisiacs.

And, don't forget the shells which were valuable for decorative items and even fashionable, high-end shoes from Europe.

So it was, sad but true, that Caribbean sea turtles were doomed.

Until one good man came along.

The Windward Road: Power of the Pen

In a world seemingly bent on self-destruction, sometimes a single man or woman---or child---brings us back from the brink.

Like Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring which led to the ban of DDT and the launch of the environment movement.

And, a 9 year old Swedish fourth grader, Roland Teinsuu, who, hearing his teacher talk about how beautiful, but delicate, Costa Rica was, decided to help. Starting with his classmates, then his school, then his town, then his country, and then in 44 other countries, the movement resulted in the purchase of 56,000 acres, aptly called the Children's Eternal Forest.

And, Dr. Archie Carr's award winning book, The Windward Road, describing the plight of sea turtles, led not only to the creation of Tortuguero Park but also to the rise of national and international conservation organizations determined to save the planet's dwindling sea turtle populations. The pen is mightier than the sword.

And, ultimately far more profitable.

You see, until Dr. Carr came along, the value of sea turtles and Costa Rica wildlife was deemed to come from their exploitation; after Carr, it became clear that they were far more valuable alive than dead because people would travel the world to see them.

Dr. Carr, probably more than anyone else on the planet, is responsible for the 110,000 Costa Rica ecotourism visitors to Tortuguero.

22 miles of black-sand beaches where Tortuguero Park sea turtles lay the proverbial golden eggs.

No more turtle soup.

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