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On the banks of the Aguarico River in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a group of Indigenous Siekopai women are combining traditional knowledge and modern technology to help a threatened native turtle recover.<\/p>\n
Their efforts center around charapa turtles\u00a0 (Podocnemis unifilis<\/em>), also known as the yellow-spotted Amazon River turtle, <\/em>Mongabay Latam\u2019s Astrid Arellano reported. <\/a>The animal\u2019s populations have declined due to hunting adult turtles, harvesting eggs from nests and pollution from garbage, oil and gasoline. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we see plastic, garbage bags,\u201d Janeth Piaguaje, a Siekopai community leader of the project, told Mongabay Latam. \u201cWe also see dead animals floating down the river. We can\u2019t control all of that, but we do make a significant effort to clean the beaches where we work.\u201d<\/p>\n Boat traffic is also eroding riverbanks, and climate change has caused water levels to rise, flooding the flats where turtles make their nests. <\/em>Charapa\u00a0turtles are<\/em><\/span>\u00a0listed as<\/em> vulnerable<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by the<\/em> IUCN, the global conservation authority.<\/em><\/p>\n To help the turtles recover, a group of seven <\/em>Siekopai women, who call themselves Tari Nomiowa\u2019i,<\/strong>\u00a0or \u201cturtle women,\u201d patrol the riverbanks looking for turtle tracks and nests. When they find nests, the women carefully collect the eggs, a skill Piaguaje said she learned from her father.<\/p>\n \u201cHe taught me how to handle the eggs, how to see on what dates and in what months the turtles lay their nests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The women document the date, time, location and number of eggs in each nest using the\u00a0Epicollect5\u00a0app, a field data collection tool.<\/p>\n Then they take the eggs to an incubation facility where they are protected from predators, flooding and pollution. Once the eggs hatch, the women continue to care for the baby turtles for another month, feeding them cassava, sweet potato and taro leaves.<\/p>\n Their painstaking work has paid off. Over the 2025-26 nesting season, the women collected 235 eggs and successfully hatched and released 208 hatchlings into the Aguarico River over March and April this year. The group invited the local community, including schoolchildren, to participate in the turtle release and attend workshops.<\/p>\n \u201cA little girl said, \u2018I\u2019m going to take care of them, I\u2019m going to tell them not to touch the eggs,\u2019\u201d Piaguaje recalled.<\/p>\n A driving force behind the work of the Tari Nomiowa\u2019i\u00a0is their culture and the ancestral belief that the turtles are a link between the visible and spiritual worlds, each swimming with protection from Koouwaj\u00ebo, the spiritual chief, mother and ancestral guardian of the turtles. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI want\u00a0Koouwaj\u00ebo\u00a0to be proud,\u201d said Piaguaje. \u201cWhen we protect turtles, we don\u2019t just care for a species; we honor the spirits of the river, strengthen our culture and maintain the sacred pact between our community and nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the full story by Astrid Arellano in Spanish <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Banner image:<\/em><\/strong> The Tari Nomiowa\u2019i women collecting charapa turtle <\/em>(Podocnemis unifilis) <\/em>eggs, taking data and measuring the nest. Image courtesy of CI Ecuador.<\/em><\/p>\n
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