Spawning turtles return to Mexico despite threat
More than 100,000 protected Olive Ridley sea turtles have lumbered onto a Mexican beach in recent days to lay some 10 million eggs, just weeks after poachers massacred spawning turtles on the same stretch of sand.
Mexico’s environmental protection agency Profepa said on Monday that the turtles had arrived in the 72 hours to Sunday at Escobilla beach in Oaxaca state, a major nesting ground on the Pacific coast that is also a hunting field for poachers who plunder nests and sell the eggs.
Another 25,000 Olive Ridleys arrived on other beaches in Oaxaca last week in an eons-old annual ritual that draws females back to the same beaches where they were born to deposit their eggs.
Security was stepped up at beaches after egg poachers bludgeoned and chopped about 80 of the turtles to death last month on Escobilla, not far from the popular tourist resorts of Puerto Angel and Puerto Escondido.
Killing or capturing Olive Ridley turtles, the smallest of the world’s eight sea turtle species, has been banned in Mexico since 1990, with sentences of up to nine years in prison. Profepa said it had teamed up with the Navy and the Attorney General’s office to protect the nesting beaches.
The eggs, eaten raw with salt and lemon, are widely believed to be an aphrodisiac, although Mexican officials recently launched a publicity campaign to dispel that notion.
Profepa on Monday took pains to note that the eggs have no aphrodisiac powers and in fact are loaded with unhealthy fat, “which causes, in those who mistakenly consume them, high levels of cholesterol and other illnesses.”
As elsewhere, turtles born on Escobilla beach return there years later on nights between June and November to dig nests in the sand and deposit eggs. Thousands of turtles at a time can crawl out of the sea in a nocturnal spectacle.
Thanks to better protection from poachers and deadly fishing nets, the Olive Ridley is making a comeback after its population declined in past years. Record numbers spawned along Mexico’s Pacific coast last year.
Source: alertnet.org
Saving some baby sea turtles in Mexico
I'm on an isolated Mexican beach in the dark, waves crashing, yet all I'm thinking about is the first time I sent each of my kids off to school.
There are no brave 5-year-olds getting on yellow school buses anywhere near this remote spot two hours north of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific Coast, no moms and dads clutching cameras and wiping away tears. The "kids" that have prompted my sweet reverie could fit into a kindergartner's palm: Baby Olive Ridley sea turtles, more than 600 of them tonight, with our help are taking their
Using machetes, poachers killed some 80 protected Olive Ridley sea turtles on Escobilla beach in Oaxaca, Mexico last weekend. The poachers were believed to be after turtle eggs, thought to be an aphrodisiac among locals. The discovery of the massacre was accouned by Profepa, the government's environmental protection agency.
"They killed them with blows to the head and machetes. It is very brutal, the beach would have been covered in blood," said leading environmental campaigner Homero Aridjis in a report from Reuters.
The poachers wasted some 1,800 pounds (800 kg) of valuable turtle flesh which was found on the sand and
Mexico Cracks Open Myth of Sea Turtle Eggs
The fate of endangered sea turtles is entangled in a net of whispers, myths and desires among the piles of fish at the city's enormous Sonora fresh-foods market.
Although some won't admit it, the peddlers and shoppers all know where to buy turtle eggs to eat. Although it's illegal, many buy from the old man who pushes his cart through the aisles of seafood, vegetables and chili peppers.
"Lots of protein. Look at my arms!" said Alfonso Francisco Lopez, 33, a butcher who says he eats four raw turtle eggs every day,
Tropical Storm Gert dumps heavy rain on Mexico
Now Tropical Storm Gert, a somewhat ragged weather system in the Gulf of Mexico headed toward the same general area of Mexico struck last week by Hurricane Emily.
Forecasters warned that up to 12 inches of rain and potential flooding could pose a threat to life and property along portions of Mexico's Gulf Coast and inland.
They said Gert, the seventh named storm of the young hurricane season, developed from a disturbance they have been watching for days as it approached and then crossed the Yucatán Peninsula.
Though the storm was being inhibited by high-altitude winds
Mexico: Democracy Under Threat
To get a sense of the danger hovering over Mexican democracy, consider these numbers: In the 681 years between the founding of the Aztec empire in 1325 and the present day, Mexico has lived for 196 years under an indigenous theocracy, 289 years under the absolute monarchy of Spain, 106 years under personal or party dictatorships, 68 years embroiled in civil wars or revolutions, and only 22 years in democracy.
This modest democratic 3 percent of Mexicos history is divided over three periods, far separated in time: 11 years in the second half of the 19th century, 11
Mexico snares Boston bomb hoax suspect
A man accused of making a phony threat of a nuclear attack on Boston earlier this year has been arrested in Mexico, authorities said Monday.
The scare in January prompted authorities to alert the public and to increase security at the airport and on the subway. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney skipped President Bush's inauguration to return to Boston. Within days, the FBI called it a false alarm.
Mexican authorities arrested Jose Ernesto Beltran Quinonez, 34, early Saturday in Mexicali, a border city about 120 miles east of San Diego, the FBI said.
A three-count indictment charges Beltran with
Capilla del Calvario: Guadalajara
It is said that behind the Chapel of the Calvario, where eight hundred twenty-two Were the Christ up to thousands in which It was transferred to the parish because of the tremors; house is one in which a old one lived. At his house a carrier got once to request inn, he Carrier brought with himself the mentioned Image. He proposed to him to the old one that was bought it and was left it so that I know paid it return to its or to gather it if it did not agree to him.
One makes
Mexico warns tourists in Cancun of threat from Hurricane Emily
Mexican officials issued a hurricane warning Saturday for much of the eastern Yucatan peninsula, including the resort of Cancun, as Hurricane Emily barreled across the Caribbean south of Jamaica.
Authorities already were recommending tourists leave much of Mexico's Caribbean coast as a precaution.
While evacuation had not yet been ordered, the Cancun city government met with local bus companies to arrange transportation for tourists away from the low-lying spit of land that houses much of Cancun's hotel sector, which lies almost directly in the catagory 4 hurricane's path.
Mexico issued a hurricane
Mayor: Recount Not A Threat to Mexico
Opposition assertions that presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is putting Mexicos stability at risk are absurd, Alejandro Encinas, head of the Federal District government, affirmed Thursday.
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Encinas denied that the candidate of the Por el bien de todos coalition used overly aggressive language when demanding the recount of the over 41 million disputed votes cast on July 2.
By making such malicious remarks, PAN (National Action party) and the business sector are trying to create confusion, Encinas told local press.
One female police officer has been killed and another badly hurt in a drive-by shooting in the northern Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo.
The killing takes the number of police murdered in the town this year to 15, with about 110 killed during 2005.
The assassination took place close to the border with the US state of Texas.
Violence in Nuevo Laredo is the result of a vicious turf war being fought between two powerful drug cartels for control of the lucrative drug trade.
This brazen assassination, in the middle of the afternoon, took place in central Nuevo Laredo, just
