The Cooperative Agreement for the Conservation of Sea Turtles of the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama, otherwise known as the Tripartite Agreement, was signed by the Presidents of Costa Rica and Panama on Friday, May 8, 1998. The signing ceremony, which was attended by several staff and Board members of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, took place during the inauguration ceremonies for Costa Rica’s newly elected President, Miguel Angel Rodríguez. The President of Nicaragua did not attend the ceremony; however, it is anticipated that Nicaragua will sign the Agreement in the very near future.

STC, the Mesoamerican Environmental Law Program (MELP) at the Uni-versity of Florida, the National Resource Law Center of San Jose, Costa Rica, the Center for International Environmental Law, Central American government officials, indigenous peoples and sea turtle specialists worked together to develop a model agreement for the regional management of Caribbean sea turtles. A draft of the agreement was completed in 1997. Since then, the STC and MELP, with assistance from the Wildlife Conservation Society and funding from USAID, have facilitated a series of negotiation workshops involving natural resource managers from each of the three countries. The negotiations reached a successful conclusion recently in Panama, and the final agreement was forwarded to the Presidents of each country for signing.