Ex-poacher now leads drive to save Baja's sea turtles
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20030330-9999_1m30...
Ban on sale of meat has created thriving black market in Mexico
By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 30, 2003
TIJUANA ? When it comes to championing the cause of Baja California's endangered sea turtles, Francisco "Gordo" Fisher isn't exactly the first person
who comes to mind.
For years, he was a prolific turtle poacher, snaring as many as 2,000 creatures a year from the nutrient-rich waters off the Baja California
peninsula, then selling them live to black market suppliers in Ensenada and Tijuana.
He now says he just wants to save them ? and set a good example for the younger generation.
"I don't want them to encounter the kinds of problems that I did," said the sun-weathered 41-year-old from Baja California Sur, who recently completed
a six-month jail sentence for poaching turtles.
Fisher has joined forces with some of his fiercest critics, members of Wildcoast, a California-based conservation group that campaigns to save
endangered sea turtles.
Last week Wildcoast and Fisher blitzed Tijuana's radio and television stations, urging people not to eat turtle meat. Next week they plan to do the
same in Mexico City.
The campaign is timed to coincide with the Easter season, when demand for turtle traditionally peaks in Mexico.
Commonly called cag?ama, turtle is often eaten in tacos or soup, and some say its rich meat tastes a bit like chicken. These days, turtle meat sells
for about $14 a pound, said a Tijuana cook who recently turned down an offer to buy some turtle meat.
Though Mexico's federal government has banned the sea turtle catch since 1990, the high demand for turtle meat still drives a thriving black market.
Wildcoast estimates that 35,000 turtles are consumed each year on the Baja California peninsula, which is frequented by five of the world's seven
species of sea turtle. All are considered endangered species in the United States and Mexico.
"Taking away the turtle is a disaster, an enormous change to the ecosystem," Wildcoast co-director Wallace J. Nichols told listeners on Tijuana's
Radio Enciso, where he appeared with Fisher. "It's like the killing of buffalo in the United States."
Curbing the illegal trade isn't easy.
In small fishing communities where sea turtle is caught and often consumed, residents are loath to turn one another in, said Rubi Moreno, an
environmental educator who works for the federal government in Baja California Sur.
"The grandparents don't believe that sea turtles are in danger of extinction," Moreno said. "They think they will die eating sea turtle."
Moreno and others believe the key to turtle conservation is persuading younger people to stop eating the meat.
Fisher, who learned to catch turtles at age 13, says it's younger people he hopes to reach with his story.
When he was boy, "We all ate cag?ama; it wasn't a problem," Fisher said, so he followed his father's footsteps and went into the business. Even after
the government banned the catch, he kept working, casting his net in Laguna San Ignacio and the Pacific Ocean.
For years, nobody denounced him, and he made good money. Local residents "helped me with my contraband, to load the cars ? even the municipal police
assisted me," he said. He made crucial contacts with buyers in Tijuana and Ensenada.
Fisher even developed a relationship with Wildcoast's Nichols.
Said Nichols, "I heard he was a poacher and could show me what was going on. He's been kind of my friend and my nemesis for the past eight years."
Turning Fisher in was out of the question, Nichols said: "Everybody knew he was selling turtles to the people who were supposed to be putting him in
jail."
But enforcement efforts have been stepped up in recent years, and Wildcoast says it will start passing tips to inspectors from Mexico's environmental
police, or Profepa. Such information is crucial, said Oswaldo Santillan, Profepa's chief inspector in Baja California.
The agency's biggest challenge is shutting down the networks that transport and market the meat.
"We'll catch a fisherman, who are the poorest and weakest link, but we haven't been able to strike at the leaders and break up the networks,"
Santillan said.
Fisher said he was arrested four times. The first three, he got off lightly. But in 2000, after soldiers found seven turtles in his car, he got a
six-month sentence, which he served last year.
It was in jail that he began to change, he said, after receiving a visit from Javier Villavicencio, a childhood friend and former fisherman who leads
Wildcoast's Grupo Tortuguero, a group of fishermen who monitor the turtle population at seven critical locations on the Baja California peninsula.
Villavicencio said, "We asked him if he was doing OK there, and he said no."
Villavicencio invited Fisher to join the group when he got out of jail. Though Fisher at first shrugged off the offer, he came around: Villavicencio
had been his only visitor at the jail.
"I decided in prison, it's not worth having problems, and problems, and problems," Fisher said.
After his release, Fisher got a job cleaning lobsters in his hometown, San Ignacio, making up to $30 a day. It's a fraction of what he once earned.
"I'll get used to it," he shrugged. He also works with Wildcoast, which is paying his expenses and $30 per day during the campaign.
Poaching still continues in nearby communities, Fisher said, but without him in charge, no one is now poaching in San Ignacio.
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