From Turtle Bogue to Tortuguero
In the past...
From pre-Columbian natives, early explorers and pirates, to the first settlers; all had the turtle as the main consumer product, through their meat and eggs and even their shells that were also used for making complementary products.
Turtle Bogue or Boca Tortuga, as Tortuguero was previously known, was settled in the early twentieth century, near the 20s, by Afro-Caribbean families from Limon and Parismina, along with some migrants who came from
Barra del Colorado and Nicaragua.
These migrations occurred due to two main reasons:
1. Be part of the economic benefit generated by the worldwide golden age of the exploitation of precious woods, where Tortuguero and its vast forests offered lots of high-quality timber, such as Almond (Almendro) or Cativo and were relatively easy to be transported through the canals network.
2. Take advantage of the expansion of the agricultural frontier to establish new land and plantations, especially coconut and mango.
The Turtle Bogue consisted of a few families distributed in a small strip of land and sawmill where all the wood that was being removed from the forests of Tortuguero was processed.
Then...
In the 50s an event happened that changes the history at Turtle Bogue. A zoologist at the University of Florida, Dr. Archie Carr was interested in the behavior of sea turtles, therefore he searched at the Caribbean and Central American countries the ideal site for making his studies.
Thus way he came to Tortuguero, attracted by rumors of a beach filled with green turtles and completely wild conditions, founding the CCC (Caribbean Conservation Corporation). From his studies began to be evident the ecological importance of the whole plain of Tortuguero, not only for being the main area of spawning of sea turtles in the Latin American Caribbean but also by the complexity of ecosystems harboring and lot species that inhabit them.
The growing ecological information joined the conservationist trend of the country in the 70s, triggering the declaration of Tortuguero National Park on September 24, 1970 by Executive Decree 1235-A, published in La Gaceta No. 213, which marks its territorial limits and general rules governing its management. On November 3, 1975 by Republic Act No. 5680, its establishment and management rules were reaffirmed. Since the TNP was established its limits have been modified three times by Executive Decrees (1980, 1995 and 1998). Its extension has gone from 64,701.45 to 76,937 hectares. Of these 50,284 are marine and 26,653 are terrestrial.
The declaration as a National Park and the fame of sea turtles caused by the early mid-80s the travelers were coming to the area, at that time they were adventurers looking to explore new horizons. Tortuguero gradually became a town living from tourism activities, where very few of its inhabitants eat turtle and rather they help in the conservation of sea turtles and their ecosystem.