This summer, a UK Wildlife Filmmaking student will travel to a remote village on El Salvador’s Pacific coast to document the incredible work of a local all-female team who are protecting endangered sea turtles from illegal poaching.
Catherine Brookes, a Biology graduate and current masters student at the University of the West of England, will be embarking on her most exciting and challenging filming project yet. Sea turtle conservation is a subject she has always been extremely passionate about, and through this short film she hopes to raise awareness of a lesser known threat to these much-loved creatures. Across central America, sea turtle eggs are being stolen from nests and sold illegally on the black market for human consumption. This is a serious issue for the turtles, with their numbers plummeting in recent years. However, one unconventional team of conservationists are fighting to put an end to this devastating trade.
AMBAS are an all-female community conservation group, made up of 35 Salvadoran women from the village of Barra de Santiago. They run a sea turtle hatchery in their village. Here, turtle eggs can be kept in artificial nests where they are safe from poachers. Once the hatchlings emerge, they are released back to the ocean. These incredible women are dedicating their lives to protecting sea turtles. However, their journey hasn’t been easy. When the women first decided to form a conservation group, they received a huge amount of backlash from the men of their community. A woman’s role was traditionally to cook and clean at home, and the men didn’t want them working. The women ignored the backlash and followed their passions. Today, they are well respected within the community and have saved tens of thousands of turtle eggs from poaching.
Catherine will be following this amazing team of women on their mission to protect the turtles and convert poachers into conservationists. She’ll be producing a short film about their work for her masters thesis film. She hopes not only to raise awareness about the plight of turtles, but to inspire more women to break stereotypes and stand up for conservation. The final film be released online and shown to industry professionals from the BBC Natural History Unit at a cinema screening in November 2018. She can’t wait to get started on this incredible project!
