Description
Sea turtles are threatened globally. Their conservation requires, not just scientists and
governments, but communities as well. Conservationists have been developing ways to reduce
tensions between governments, biologists, and local communities. While community-based
conservation has been implemented successfully in certain cases, work must be done to
acknowledge the spiritual values of nature to garner more support for conservation from local
communities. For this reason, we chose to analyze how sea turtles have been viewed spiritually
in Latin America and globally throughout history by performing a literature review. Many
coastal communities have centuries old spiritual beliefs regarding sea turtles. Furthermore, we
conducted a case study in Ostional, Costa Rica, a village known for its sea turtle conservation, as well as its controversial sea turtle egg harvesting. From this study, which utilized surveys and
interviews, we learned that spirituality is a motivator for conservation for the people of Ostional.
Thus, we suggest that spirituality should be utilized as an appeal for local communities to
support local conservation efforts. Governments and scientists should include spirituality in
community-based conservation discourse. Further studies should assess how best to apply
spiritual appeals in this discourse and its effectiveness overall, as well as among different age
demographics.
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Details
Title
- Sea Turtles in Costa Rican Spirituality and Folklore: How Does This Influence Conservation Efforts?
Contributors
- DeFazio, Victoria (Author)
- Britton, Michael (Thesis director)
- Burgher, Kayla (Committee member)
- Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
- School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
- School of Earth and Space Exploration (Contributor)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2024-05
Resource Type
Collections this item is in