10 Million Hatchlings Saved!
“How much does it cost to save a hatchling?” This question posed in 2013 by our co-founder Dr. Wallace J. Nichols launched Billion Baby Turtles, which has become SEE Turtles largest and most effective program. At the time, we didn’t know the cost but we figured if it was $1 per hatchling saved, it would be an effective way to raise funds for turtle nesting beaches.
We approached a handful of organizations that we knew well and asked them to calculate that cost for their beaches, dividing the total project budget by the average number of hatchlings produced. Combining those first few projects, the result was 5 hatchlings saved per dollar and the program was born. The first few years, we raised around $30,000 per year and supported 8-10 groups and 100,000 – 200,000 hatchlings per year. We reached our first milestone of 1 million hatchlings saved in 2017, 4 years after the launch of the program.
Our first partner in this program was the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, a new project at the time that was supporting efforts to protect this population in Nicaragua and El Salvador in conjunction with ProCosta and Fauna & Flora Nicaragua. These programs provide direct payments to local residents who bring nests to their hatcheries, the first efforts to protect one of the world’s most endangered sea turtle populations. This model ensures that local residents benefit from conservation efforts instead of taking away their livelihoods, which has happened at many nesting beaches around the world.
Eastern Pacific Hawksbill at Padre Ramos Estuary, Nicaragua (photo: Brad Nahill / SEE Turtles)
In 2018, Billion Baby Turtles began a period of intense growth, from $50,000 raised to more than $250,000 raised in 2022. We went from a few hundred thousand saved per year to more than a million. These funds come from a variety of sources, including individual donors, students and schools, sustainable business sponsors, private foundations, and income from SEE Turtles conservation tours.
For 15 years, the support of SEE Turtles has been fundamental for the conservation of the black turtle population in Michoacan, Mexico. They are the only international donor to the project, which has seen a remarkable recovery, going from only 533 nests in 1999 to more than 80,000 nests per season now. —Dr. Carlos Delgado, University of Michoacan
Now, this program saves multiple millions of hatchlings per year and we have reached our next milestone of more than 10,000,000 hatchlings saved. We have granted more than $1 million in 200+ grants to more than 60 organizations working on beaches in more than 20 countries. These grants support efforts to protect five of the seven species of sea turtles worldwide, with a focus on the most endangered turtles and populations including hawksbills and greens and Eastern Pacific leatherback turtles. We determine which projects to support based on a variety of criteria including the intensity and type of threats faced at those locations, how threatened that population is, the level of local community involvement, and the amount of outside funding the organization receives.
Perhaps the most successful of our partners is Colola Beach in Mexico, where the University of Michoacan in collaboration with the local Nahua community, has had an extraordinary growth in the number of nesting turtles and hatchlings over the past twenty-plus years. This population of black turtles (a sub-species of green turtles) had numbers in the tens of thousands of nests in the past but with intense collection of eggs and meat exported around the world, their numbers crashed. Despite starting work there in the early 80’s, by the end of the century their nesting numbers had dropped to around 500 for the entire season.
Black turtle hatchling at Colola (photo: Juan Ma Contortrix)
But the hard work of the Nahua community with support from university scientists started to bear fruit in the 2000’s, with the population growing slowly each year. That growth has accelerated in the past few years, with more than 80,000 nests last season and 5 million hatchlings, making it now one of the most important green turtle beaches in the world. SEE Turtles is now the only international supporter of this program.
Billion Baby Turtles now protects more than 3 million hatchlings per year. We would not have reached this milestone without the incredible support of thousands of donors, hundreds of students, dozens of schools and business sponsors, and more than 1,500 travelers. This program has grown to one of the largest private funders of turtle conservation in the world and we believe the program will continue to grow in the number of hatchlings saved and nesting beaches supported around the world.