A Billion Is A Big Number
J. Nichols
J. Nichols was always full of big ideas. Like “lets track a turtle across an ocean when nobody else has.” Or “lets start a project that helps turtle communities benefit from conservation tourism.” Or my favorite, “Lets invite Michele Obama to release hatchlings in Florida.”
But when he came to me in 2013 with an idea to save a billion hatchlings, my first reaction was skepticism. How on earth would we do that??? But as we discussed, I started to come around (as I did on many of these ideas, if not all of them.) When he asked, “How much does it cost to save a baby turtle?”, that got my interest going. “Lets find out!” I said. We reached out to several of our closest partners to ask them and started gathering the data.
The range was wide from those we polled, to a few pennies at places like Colola Mexico, to several dollars each at leatherback nesting beaches in Costa Rica. But when we averaged them out, the answer was surprising, .20 cents each or 5 saved per dollar. Billion Baby Turtles was born.
We began raising funds and giving them to a few groups we knew well from our past work in Mexico and Costa Rica, groups like Latin American Sea Turtles (that I had worked for), the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, and Paso Pacifico in Nicaragua. Over time, as we brought in new partners, the cost dropped to .10 cents to save a hatchling or 10 for one dollar.
The first few years were modest, raising and distributing between $30,000 and $50,000 to 10-15 groups per year and helping to save a few hundred thousand hatchlings per year. We reached our first million saved by 2017, taking 5 years to reach that milestone. We had a few loyal corporate and foundation sponsors supporting the program those first years, including Nature’s Path Foods, Endangered Species Chocolate, and World Nomads Insurance.
Billion Baby Turtles started picking up steam in 2019 when we first passed $100,000 in grants for the year and saving more than a million in one year alone for the first time and 3 million total. That year was the first year we worked with the Berman Memorial Fund to help launch new nesting beaches. That collaboration has blossomed into becoming one of our biggest supporters and has now provided several hundred thousand in funding for 24 projects around the world.
The program then grew rapidly over the next 3 years, reaching nearly 2 million hatchings and $175,000 in grants by 2021. In 2022, we got our largest corporate donation from Soda Stream of $100,000, helping to save a million hatchlings alone.
Leatherback hatchling. Photo: Neil Ever Osborne
Billion Baby Turtles is now our flagship program, providing more than $250,000 in grants per year to 40 to 50 important nesting beaches. We have averaged between 3 and 6 million hatchlings saved each year since 2022 and expect to grow even more over the next few years. From a couple hundred thousand saved per year, we have now provided more than $1.6 million in 330 grants over the past 13 years, providing resources for community organizations on more than 60 beaches in 25 countries to hire residents to patrol the beaches and release the hatchlings. 23,400,000 baby turtles saved total through 2025.
From taking 5 years to reach our first million, and then 5 million more in 3 years, and then ten in two years, we have now reached more than 20 million baby turtles saved. The only sad part is that we lost J. in 2024, so he is no longer here to enjoy this milestone with us. But we celebrate his memory by raising funds to support beaches through Grupo Tortuguero de las Californias, an organization he co-founded decades ago. As he would surely joke, “Only 880 million hatchlings to go!”
Learn more about this huge milestone and how you can help save baby turtles.