Nature Air

For All Time is a twenty year old, award-winning documentary, addressing the urgency for creating the Las Baulas Marine Park. This video is timeless, primarily because absolutely nothing seems to have changed in the two decades since. Inaction is a co-conspirator with time, and both are mortal enemies to the preservation of the natural environment. 

The Leatherback sea turtle has silently witnessed the demise of the dinosaur and somehow managed to survive over a million years, enduring every natural threat imaginable. In the blink of fifty years, we have brought these creatures to the very brink of extinction because we have confused stewardship of the natural world with ownership.

The three principals in the video have a long history with Las Baulas and are no less committed to its survival today. Mario Boza, one of the architects of Costa Rica’s national park system is now a conservation authority, involved with countless projects and is still an outspoken advocate on behalf of the country’s wildlife. Dr. Peter Pritchard is a world-renowned expert on turtle species. We have recently published his incredibly powerful plea on behalf of the preservation of Las Baulas and the entire national park system. It is a stunning bookend to his appearance in the video twenty years earlier. Mario Boza recalls, “Baulas Park was created in 1991 based on the research and recommendations by James Spotila, Frank Paladino and Peter Pritchard.”

No one has been closer to this situation than Maria Teresa Koberg Gutierrez, who briefly recounts her story:

The very same threats to the Leatherback sea turtles in Playa Grande that we encountered in the late eighties, rampant urban development and the destruction of the Leatherback’s nesting effort, their eggs and hatchlings, are present today.  Unfortunately, now only a few Leatherback’s nest in Playa Grande every season because the spoilage of their eggs during several decades, has taken its toll.

In the early eighties, empowered by the First Lady, Margarita Penón de Arias, who had accepted, at my request, to be Godmother of the Sea Turtles of Costa Rica; I approached the protection of sea turtles along both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts.

Together with Alicia Vega Rojas, Margarita’s personal assistant, Mario Boza, Director of the National Parks Foundation wherein the Sea Turtle Rescue Program created by myself was administrated, and Peter C.H. Pritchard, scientific advisor of the program; we were able to inspire the Girl and Boy Scouts Association of Costa Rica to help us protect the sea turtles. It worked, and under the firm and wise guidance of Stanley Rodríguez Méndez, more than 3,000 youngsters patrolled the beaches at both Matina and Playa Grande. The results were amazing and included the creation of Las Baulas de Guanacaste Marine National Park and the inspiration for creating two Leatherback sea turtle reserves along the Caribbean coast, at Pacuare, north of Matina:  The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Pacuare Reserve, founded by John Denham and administrated for more than two decades by John, and Carlos Fernández Alfaro, along with Estación Las Tortugas, founded and administrated by Stanley Rodriguez Méndez.

The Girl and Boy Scouts’ program also brought sea turtle conservation, up to then the domain of government officials and foreign scientists, to the Costa Rican middle class. At present, Costa Rican sea turtle beaches are protected by both Costa Rican and visiting volunteers.

The story behind the production of For All Time is one of overcoming all sorts of challenges, plus a fair amount of serendipity. You are encouraged to visit the web site of the Honu Project.