Jairo Vive

Jairo weighs a hatchling leatherback. In 2012, according to The Tico Times, Jairo and his colleagues on Moín Beach saved 1,474 sea turtle nests. In 2013, poachers stole the eggs from all but eight. Photo: Christine Figgener, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sometime after 10:30 p.m. on May 30, 2013, Jairo Morra Sandoval was murdered on a Costa Rican beach. Jairo, who was 26 years old, protected leatherback turtle eggs and was killed for it by a particularly violent group of poachers.

This week, the seven men accused of his murder were acquitted. According to the Costa Rican newspaper The Tico Times, “In her closing explanation, a visibly angry Judge Yolanda Alvarado admonished prosecutors and the OIJ (Judicial Investigation Police), citing fundamental and troubling problems with the investigation and the prosecution’s presentation as the key reasons they could not reach a guilty verdict.”

The Tico Times outlines the “delays and blunders” in the trial in this article. Both this piece by The Tico Times and this piece in Outside Magazine give background on the story.

This story is distressing and sad. Jairo had been working with sea turtles since he was a little boy. He released his first leatherback turtle hatchlings when he was six. He was on the front lines, trying to keep leatherbacks safe. As the beach became more dangerous and after the local police force cut back their security detail, Jairo used to call his mother for a blessing before he went on patrol.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stood in front of groups of people and listed off “poaching” as one of the threats to the survival of leatherback turtles. People stealing the eggs, which are worth about $1 each on the black market.

But it’s hard to explain what it takes to stop it. I think of my friend Suzan Lakhan Baptiste of Nature Seekers who stood unarmed on Matura Beach in Trinidad, staring down poachers with machetes, ordering them to stay away from the leatherbacks and their eggs. Now virtually no leatherbacks are poached on Matura Beach anymore.

Canada is in a unique position when it comes to leatherbacks. Turtles from the nesting colonies throughout the Caribbean come to Atlantic Canada to feed on jellyfish each spring, summer and fall. I often say that we’re like the United Nations for sea turtles.

Jairo died on Playa Moín—on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The Atlantic side. Canadian turtles nest in Costa Rica. Jairo died protecting animals that could very well have been “ours.

Graffiti outside of the Limón court where seven men were acquitted of Jairo’s murder. Photo: Courtesy Lindsay Fendt (@LEFendt)