Passion for the natural world takes Ronan grad to Costa Rica

Mollie Sydnor, a 2023 graduate of Ronan High School, likes turtles, water and the natural world. Those interests converged during a recent internship at the Pacuare Nature Reserve in Costa Rica, where she spent a several months monitoring nesting leatherback sea turtles.

Sydnor, who received the Flathead Lakers inaugural STEM scholarship for $1,000, is taking a gap year between high school and attending the University of Montana this fall. During the past 12 months, she worked on a trail crew, traveled in Ecuador and worked as an intern in Costa Rica. She explained her turtle research while volunteering at the Flathead Lakers recent Poker Paddle in Polson.

The Pacuare Reserve has a stretch of beach nearly four miles long where endangered leatherback sea turtles – the largest and most endangered marine turtle population in the world – lay eggs. During her internship, Sydnor prowled the beach at night looking for nesting turtles, collecting their eggs and moving them "to a safe hatchery to keep them safe from excessive heat and predators and poachers,” she said.

Sydnor also collected data on the turtle moms, measuring their size (leatherbacks can weigh up to 1,000 pounds and measure six-feet long) and chronicling their nesting sites, as well as installing microchips in the turtles’ shoulders so their travels could be tracked through the world’s oceans.

A single turtle might lay more than 100 eggs in the sand before returning to sea. It helped Sydnor’s egg-collection efforts that leatherback females enter a hormone-induced trance when they deposit their clutch. 

“So, they are really unaware of any human intervention that's happening,” Sydnor said.

Still, the researchers tried “to be as low profile as possible” by wearing dark clothing, using only red lights and avoiding shining any light in the turtle’s face, she said.

A mature turtle, whose eggs are around the size of a tennis ball, might plop up to 120 in a hole. Afterward, they crawl back to the ocean, flinging sand with their flippers to camouflage the nest from predators.

Researchers are onto their secret, however. If they see a turtle digging a nest, they line the hole with plastic bags and capture the eggs that way. Otherwise, they carefully excavate nests, collect eggs and care for them until the baby turtles hatch and are released back into the sea, which helps lower their mortality.

The internship, which was sponsored by Ecology Project International in concert with Pacuare Nature Reserve, also involved educating high school students from Costa Rica and the United States about turtle research and protection.

Sydnor was back in the Mission Valley this summer before heading to the University of Montana, where she plans to study environmental science and sustainability with a focus in ecosystem science and restoration.

“I'll be doing that for the next couple years, trying to get some more cool internships and jobs,” she said. “I'm not quite sure where my path is going to take me. I just know I'm really interested in conservation.”

“Mollie's dedication to environmental stewardship is truly inspiring,” noted the Flathead Lakers in announcing Sydnor’s scholarship.

For more on the scholarship program, visit www.flatheadlakers.org/flathead-lakers-scholarship.