So the butcher of Escobilla was driven from the beach in humiliation and disgrace. The good guys won, the villain was crushed, and the turtles were saved for all eternity.

That's the way I'd like to end this report. But the turtles are not yet saved, and Antonio Suárez may not have been a total villain.

According to Dr. Peter Pritchard, "It was easy to see Suárez as evil incarnate, and that is how I saw him at first." After talking with him for a while, Pritchard saw that Suárez truly believed industrialization was the only way to preserve the turtles: If turtles are were worth more the local people than eggs are worth to poachers, then poaching would stop on the beach.

What Suárez didn't believe was that harvesting during the nesting season was harmful to the population as a whole. "He was beginning to come around to our point of view," said Pritchard. "Hard facts, statistics, scientific research impressed him. That is why I invited him to the sea-turtle conference in Washinton." That is where Suárez was served with the subpoena.

"I knew nothing about that," Pritchard said. When Suárez fled, Pritchard raced to the airport. He wanted to assure Suárez that he had not betrayed him. "We didn't talk for some time after that," Pritchard said. "He did call me when he made the decision to quit the business, though. He was very concerned about what the world thought of him. He didn't want to be known as the man who was killing off an entire species of animal. I remember I once asked him what he thought about the Outside article. I thought he would scream and yell, call it a pack of lies. Instead he looked very sad. 'They judged us harshly,' he said. He was sensitive to that judgment."

Perhaps the person whose opinion counted most with Suárez was his daughter. "He loves his daughter," Pritchard said. "He dotes on her. He told me once that if she even told him to quit the business, he would at once, without question. One day he called me. Now I'm sure there are many other reasons for his decision, but he said, 'Peter, Fernanda asked me to stop killing turtles.'"