Marine Conservation without Borders – Mexico (2020)

AZA-SAFE GRANT RECIPIENT

Marine Conservation without Borders (MCwB) collaborates with Indigenous communities worldwide to develop environmental science curricula that integrate Indigenous ecological knowledge with western science to help these two worlds collaborate to protect biodiversity. With its 2020 AZA-SAFE SWOT grant, MCwB will develop a middle school science curriculum on sea turtles for students in Quintana Roo, focusing on eastern Pacific leatherbacks and Kemp’s ridleys, written in Spanish and English and ethno-translated into Maya.

The mangrove ecosystems biocultural curriculum prototype can be downloaded in multiple language combinations from the Marine Conservation without Borders free Digital Library.

MCwB’s Maya [yua] ecological knowledge, language and culture expert Hilario Poot Cahun with his class at his primary school in X-Hazil Norte, Quintana Roo, México © Robby Thigpen

Sea Turtle coauthors Gabriela Ochoa, Program Manager for the Roatán Marine Park, and Robby Thigpen, Principal Investigator for MCwB, are holding biocultural curriculum written in Miskito and Garifuna, which are two of the Indigenous languages used in the fisheries of Honduras © Robby Thigpen Archives