By C.F. AGURCIA 

SAN PEDRO SULA -- North of the nation's industrial capital, a new land development project promises to demonstrate a novel, ecological type of urbanization.  Campisa Residential, due to be ready by the beginning of next year, will literally provide its residents with a national park for their backyard.

Project manager Roberto Flores-Gomez said that according to municipal laws, a certain percentage of land being developed must be given over to the local government.  In most neighborhoods, the municipality builds simple parks, soccer fields or just leaves the land empty until they find some use for it.  Instead of allowing this to happen, the people of Campisa decided to take this percentage of land and preserve the tropical dry forest that is already there.

One gets to Campisa by turning off the road toward Puerto Cortes.  The residential is located inside a fenced compound at the base of a small mountain covered by a several decades old forest.  With plots measuring from around 400 square yards and up, the project is aimed at the middle-class market that is growing so quickly in San Pedro Sula.

An inner-residential contract will not allow residents to build walls around their properties.  A gate controlling the entrance to Campisa and security guards working there will do well to provide safety from outside threats.

"We're trying to promote a friendly neighborhood environment," Flores-Gomez explained, "one where you know the guy who lives next door and the one who lives a block away.  Residents here will not feel worried about leaving their lawn mower outside overnight."

Waterworks and electricity have just been recently installed, but before the project will be ready to open, a visitor's center will be built.  Inside it, lessons will be held for the residents about the forest they will be living beside.  They will be taught how to take care of their surroundings and how to help instead of hindering it.

Behind the center will be the start of several nature trails that will take residents and visitors up and around the mountain.  Walking through these, hikers will come in contact with different animal species running or crawling through the verdant, tree-filled forest.  Climbing up the trails, they will be able to reach places that will allow them to see a rare sight: a bird's eye view of San Pedro Sula.

In years to come, Campisa's investors have plans to make other urbanizations around the mountain.  These include other, separate urbanizations as well as an ecotourism hotel on the mountain's top.  They also have plans of doing a similar project in the valley of Zamorano, near Tegucigalpa.

ECO-EXCHANGE -- Just two weeks after she nested on a Caribbean beach in Costa Rica, a hawksbill sea turtle navigated 200 miles north to shallow waters off the coast of Nicaragua.  Scientists are keeping tabs on her speedy swim via satellite tracking technology. On July 20, they attached a small transmitter to the turtle's shell after she deposited eggs into a cavity dug in the black, volcanic sands of Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park.   Another hawksbill and two green sea turtles were also outfitted with the devices.

Now, each time the turtles come to the water's surface to breathe, signals are sent to a satellite in space, which beams them to receivers at the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), a Florida‑based nonprofit group.

The CCC and the Florida Marine Research Institute are conducting the sea‑turtle migration study in collaboration with Costa Rica's natural resources agency, MINAE.  CCC has attached ID tags to sea turtles for four decades in order to collect information about where the reptiles navigate after nesting in Tortuguero.  Fishermen in the Caribbean collect the tags and mail them to the CCC.

According to Roxana Silman, director of CCC's Costa Rica office, information gathered from returned turtle tags tells scientists that the animals have reached point B from point A, while the satellite data reveal their paths in between.  "We then can design regional management plans that will improve sea turtle conservation through better understanding of their migrations and biology," she says.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) are providing technical assistance and funding to the satellite‑tracking program.  NMFS's George Balazs, who helped train researchers in Tortuguero, explains that the agencies are also training researchers elsewhere in the region how to attach transmitters to hawksbill turtles.

More green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) nest in Tortuguero than any other of the seven species.  All are endangered due to human activities, including development on nesting sites, commercial fishing, and hunting for meat and eggs.  Hawksbill turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata) were hunted for centuries for their strikingly marked shells.

Silman notes that until 1999, Costa Rica allowed hunting of green sea turtles, once an important source of protein for Caribbean residents.  While a limit was placed on how many turtles could be killed, it was impossible to know if turtles were legally or illegally caught.  Conservationists successfully lobbied to impose a complete ban, although illegal hunting still exists.  CCC launched an educational campaign and is working with local fishing cooperatives to help develop alternative income sources.  Silman believes these efforts have helped lessen the poaching problem.

Ligia Montejo, co-owner of Manati Lodge just outside Tortuguero National Park, concurs.  "Years ago, people here made their livings from hunting sea turtles," she says.  "Now they make more money by working in tourism, taking people out to see the nesting turtles or guiding visitors through the park."

But now Costa Rica's sea turtle population faces a new threat: planned oil exploration off the Caribbean coast.  According to CCC studies, petroleum can damage sea turtle skin, lungs, stomach, and eggs.  "Newborn sea turtles are particularly vulnerable to the effects of petroleum," Silman notes.  Several conservation groups have filed a lawsuit against MINAE, which awarded an oil‑drilling concession to the U.S. firm MKJ-Xplorations.