The World’s First and Only Hicatee Captive Breeding Facility is in Belize  

The Central American river turtle, also known as the hicatee, is one of the world’s most heavily exploited species. Hicatees can only be found in southern Mexico, Northern Guatemala and Belize. One nonprofit organization nestled along the northern border of the Bladden Nature Reserve is working to replenish the hicatee population in Belize. Just over a decade ago, The Belize Foundation for Research and Environmental Education, BFREE, established the first and only hicatee captive breeding facility in the world. Before they began studying the species, not much was known about them. Through their groundbreaking research a substantial amount of data has been gathered on these turtles to better understand their behavioral patterns. Additionally, they have released hundreds of hicatees into the wild. We will have an extensive report on our visit to the facility in Wednesday night’s newscast. Tonight, we hear from Jacob Marlin, the Executive Director of BFREE who started the organization thirty years ago.

 

Jacob Marlin, Executive Director, BFREE

“Some of the core research project we have on the property right now, and I think that is why you are here, has to do with the Central American river turtle, local we call it the hicatee, interesting specie. We got involved with it twelve or thirteen years ago, my background is herpetology and I happen to know a lot of people in the international scene. So, a friend of mine reached out to me and asked what is going on with hicatee in Belize. One of the most critically endangered turtles in the world. I said yes, but I have never seen them, and I have a lot of other things going on. So, he asked me to look into it and so I started reading and talking to people and what I learned is that know nothing much about it at all. I started talking to people who go hunting and they know some about it, they know where to get them, but if you ask them what the status of the population is, nobody knows. So that led us to this collaboration with this organization called the Turtle Survival Alliance TSA which is a big international turtle conservation organization that works in dozens of countries across the world, trying to save the most critically endangered turtles. Turtles are interesting, there are only about three hundred and thirty species of turtles on the planet. They are considered one of the most endangered vertebrates in the world, along with primates and amphibians. Of those three hundred and forty species of turtles almost half are threatened with extinction. And of that half about half of those are seriously threatened with extinction. Of those species the hicatee is one of the top twenty-five of all the turtles in the world. In Belize we probably don’t think about that. Nobody knows, it is just not something people don’t know about. People like hicatee and rice. It taste nice, where is my hicatee, it is easter where is my hicatee. I get it. Culturally fine, people have been doing this for a long time.”