Use them or lose them? Conservation and the consumptive use of marine turtle eggs at Ostional, Costa Rica.

'Sustainable use' of wildlife resources and 'community based conservation' are two themes recurrent in contemporary statements of wildlife conservatio n policy, and their use is,in response to a perceived 'deep conservation cr isis' which has;in part arisen from exclusionary and restrictive conservati on practices. The extent to which the legal harvest of marine turtle eggs i n Ostional, Costa Rica, is an example of sustainable use and community base d conservation is evaluated in this paper. Field research using in-depth in terviewing and a household questionnaire was undertaken in Ostional during 1994 and 1995, to investigate local perceptions of the egg harvesting proje ct, both positive and negative. Socio-economic benefits from, and legal and administrative structures supporting, the project were found to be fundame ntal to community support for a limited egg harvest and allowed for communi ty participation in, and control of, resource use. Participation and contro l were key to local support for conservation of nesting marine turtles and their eggs. Attempts to use wildlife sustainably must be considered on a ca se by case basis, to account for the biological nature of the wildlife reso urce and environment in question and for local socio-economic, political an d historical conditions. Nevertheless, some of the lessons learned from the attempt to implement sustainable use and community based conservation in O stional may be more widely generalized, and may help inform other efforts t o reconcile wildlife conservation objectives with local development needs.