Reforestation efforts are being made in Costa Rica to recondition its biodiversity and ecosystems that were affected by heavy deforestation in the 1900s.
Reforestation efforts are being made in Costa Rica to recondition its biodiversity and ecosystems that were affected by heavy deforestation in the 1900s.
Costa Rica has six different ecosystems, and is considered a biodiversity hotspot– having 5% of the world's total biodiversity within 0.1% of its landmass. [1] The decline of the Costa Rican rainforest was due to unplanned logging in the mid-1900s. Loggers cleared much of the tropical rainforest for profit. [2] By the 1990s, Costa Rica had the world's highest global deforestation rates. [3] As a result, the Costa Rican government began its efforts to repair the damage inflicted on their landscape during this time and to develop in a sustainable manner.
In the 1940s, agriculture and unchecked logging were the main catalyst of the rapid decline of Costa Rica's indigenous woodlands. By the 1980s, two-thirds of the tropical rainforest were lost to these deforestation practices. [2] Such rapid and forceful deforestation was due to the country's inappropriate policies like: cheap credit for cattle, land-titling laws which rewarded deforestation and rapid or imprudent expansion of road systems. [4]
A vast amount of the Costa Rican natural landscape was lost, therefore the government introduced two measures to protect and revive it. Firstly, the government made it illegal to clear forest without permission. Secondly, the government introduced payments for ecological services (PES) which provided an economic incentive to conserve and restore the forest. [5]
These measures were so successful that, in 2021, the country won the first-ever Earthshot prize for their conservation efforts. [6]
In an attempt to reverse the harmful effects caused by the inappropriate policies which drove reforestion, Costa Rica started using the PES program (Payment for Environmental Services). The PES program gave financial incentives to owners of lands and forest planations for forest protection, reforestation and sustainable landscaping. [4]
The PES program led to several social benefits, improving quality of life and economic stanses. Between 1997 and 2019, more than 18,000 families benefited from the financial contributions. [4]
Several initiatives and projects have been created to protect and restore nature including the Guanacaste Conservation Area (ACG) and BaumInvest.
The Guanacaste Conservation Area (ACG) consists of 163,000 acres of lands under the administration of the Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservacion (SINAC). The ACG was created in 1986 with the mission to restore tropical dry forests, and surrounding ecosystems that have endured destruction caused by human action. [7] Their efforts began in the area of Santa Rosa National Park, created in 1971. ACG focuses on the restoration, survival and conservation of the rich flora and fauna that occupy these lands and have been threatened by hundreds of years of human occupation.
The BaumInvest reforestation project in Costa Rica began in 2007. This projects seeks to establish sustainable forestry and carbon compensation through afforestation. About 1,280 acres of pastureland has been reforested with native woods (more than one million trees were planted). [8] This project led to the recuperation of 70 different amphibian and reptile species, as well as the survival of the Dipteryx panamensis (an endangered tree species). The project also provided several positive social impacts such as: promoting environmental education, and creating secure and sustainable rural jobs which helps reduce illegal logging, poaching and animal trading. [8]
This project was the first reforestation project awarded the Gold Standard Certification for its positive impact on the environment.
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of deforestation in the tropics. In 2019, nearly a third of the overall tree cover loss, or 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests. These are areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage.
Reforestation is the practice of restoring previously existing forests and woodlands that have been destroyed or damaged. The prior forest destruction might have happened through deforestation, clearcutting or wildfires. Three important purposes of reforestation programs are for harvesting of wood, for climate change mitigation, and for ecosystem and habitat restoration purposes. One method of reforestation is to establish tree plantations, also called plantation forests. They cover about 131 million ha worldwide, which is 3% of the global forest area and 45% of the total area of planted forests.
Guanacaste is a province of Costa Rica located in the northwestern region of the country, along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Alajuela Province to the east, and Puntarenas Province to the southeast. It is the most sparsely populated of all the provinces of Costa Rica. The province covers an area of 10,141 square kilometres (3,915 sq mi) and as of 2010, had a population of 354,154, with annual revenue of $2 billion.
Daniel Hunt Janzen is an American evolutionary ecologist and conservationist. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, and his research and field work in Costa Rica.
National System of Conservation Areas is part of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) of Costa Rica. It is the administrator for the nation's national parks, conservation areas, and other protected natural areas.
The wildlife of Costa Rica comprises all naturally occurring animals, fungi and plants that reside in this Central American country. Costa Rica supports an enormous variety of wildlife, due in large part to its geographic position between North and South America, its neotropical climate, and its wide variety of habitats. Costa Rica is home to more than 500,000 species, which represent nearly 5% of the species estimated worldwide, making Costa Rica one of the 20 countries with the highest biodiversity in the world. Of these 500,000 species, a little more than 300,000 are insects.
Corcovado National Park is a National Park on the Osa Peninsula, in Osa Canton, located on the southwestern regions of Costa Rica, which is a part of the Osa Conservation Area. Corcovado National Park was established on October 24, 1975 and occupies an area of 424 square kilometres (164 sq mi). It is currently the largest park in Costa Rica and extends over about a third of the Osa Peninsula.
Guanacaste National Park, in Spanish Parque Nacional Guanacaste is a national park in northern Costa Rica. The park is part of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site, and stretches from the slopes of the Orosí and Cacao volcanoes west to the Interamerican Highway where it is adjacent to the Santa Rosa National Park. It was created in 1989, partially due to the campaigning and fund-raising of Dr. Daniel Janzen to allow a corridor between the dry forest and rain forest areas which many species migrate between seasonally. The park covers an area of approximately 340 square kilometers, and includes 140 species of mammals, over 300 birds, 100 amphibians and reptiles, and over 10,000 species of insects that have been identified. It was this high density of bio-diversity that encouraged the Costa Rican government to protect this area. The Guanacaste National Park weaves the neighboring Santa Rosa National Park with the high altitude forests of the two volcanoes, Orosi and Cacao, and the rainforest of the Caribbean in the country's north.
The Area de Conservación Guanacaste is a network of protected areas and a World Heritage Site in Guanacaste Province, in northwestern Costa Rica. The World Heritage Site contains an unbroken tract of tropical dry forest and important habitat for several vulnerable species, including the Central American tapir, mangrove hummingbird, and the great green macaw. Over 7,000 plant species and 900 vertebrate species have been located in the park.
Guanacaste Conservation Area is an administrative area which is managed by the Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservacion (SINAC) of Costa Rica for conservation in the northwestern part of Costa Rica. It contains three national parks, as well as wildlife refuges and other nature reserves. The area contains the Area de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site, which comprises four areas.
Iguanita Wildlife Refuge is a wildlife refuge in the Guanacaste Conservation Area located in the Guanacaste Province of northwestern Costa Rica.
Building blocks for tropical rainforest conservation include ecotourism and rehabilitation. Reforestation and restoration are common practices in certain areas to try to increase tropical rainforest density. By communicating with the local people living in, and around, the rainforest, conservationists can learn more about what might allow them to best focus their efforts. Rainforests are globally important to sustainability and preservation of biodiversity. Although they may vary in location and inhabited species of plants and animals, they remain important worldwide for their abundance of natural resources and for the ecosystem services. It is important to take into consideration the differing species and the biodiversity that exists across different rainforest types in order to accurately implement methods of conservation.
Payments for ecosystem services (PES), also known as payments for environmental services, are incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service. They have been defined as "a transparent system for the additional provision of environmental services through conditional payments to voluntary providers". These programmes promote the conservation of natural resources in the marketplace.
The extensive and rapid clearing of forests (deforestation) within the borders of Nigeria has significant impacts on both local and global scales.
The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is the national institute for biodiversity and conservation in Costa Rica. Created at the end of the 1980s, and despite having national status, it is a privately run institution that works closely with various government agencies, universities, business sector and other public and private entities inside and outside of the country. The goals of the institute are to complete an inventory of the natural heritage of Costa Rica, promote conservation and identify chemical compounds and genetic material present in living organisms that could be used by industries such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or others.
Deforestation is a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems in Costa Rica. The country has a rich biodiversity with some 12,000 species of plants, 1,239 species of butterflies, 838 species of birds, 440 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 232 species of mammals, which have been under threat from the effects of deforestation. Agricultural development, cattle ranching, and logging have caused major deforestation as more land is cleared for these activities. Despite government efforts to mitigate deforestation, it continues to cause harm to the environment of Costa Rica by impacting flooding, soil erosion, desertification, and loss of biodiversity.
Forest restoration is defined as "actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest", i.e. the end-stage of natural forest succession. Climax forests are relatively stable ecosystems that have developed the maximum biomass, structural complexity and species diversity that are possible within the limits imposed by climate and soil and without continued disturbance from humans. Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a major factor that determines climax forest composition, global climate change may result in changing restoration aims. Additionally, the potential impacts of climate change on restoration goals must be taken into account, as changes in temperature and precipitation patterns may alter the composition and distribution of climax forests.
Jennifer S. Powers is an American ecologist and full professor in the departments of ecology, evolution and behavior, and plant and microbial biology at the University of Minnesota. Powers' research has advanced the understanding of global change consequences, ecosystem ecology, restoration and conservation of tropical dry forests. She also has been very active on several editorial boards, and in 2019 became the editor-in-chief of Biotropica, a scientific journal from the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC).
Although the conservation movement developed in Europe in the 18th century, Costa Rica as a country has been heralded its champion in the current times. Costa Rica hosts an astonishing number of species, given its size, having more animal and plant species than the US and Canada combined hosting over 500,000 species of plants and animals. Despite this, Costa Rica is only 250 miles long and 150 miles wide. A widely accepted theory for the origin of this unusual density of species is the free mixing of species from both North and South America occurring on this "inter-oceanic" and "inter-continental" landscape. Preserving the natural environment of this fragile landscape, therefore, has drawn the attention of many international scholars and scientists.
Winifred Hallwachs is an American tropical ecologist who helped to establish and expand northwestern Costa Rica's Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). The work of Hallwachs and her husband Daniel Janzen at ACG is considered an exemplar of inclusive conservation.