Conservation and Deforestation in Costa Rican Parks

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

4/3/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Despite significant efforts to conserve its tropical resources, the

following article claims that Costa Rica "is not living up to its own

environmental rhetoric--either in supporting its famous park system or

in halting deforestation." Given frequent statements that Costa Rica

is leading the way in sustainable development, these claims are

troubling. The 11% of forested areas that are supposedly under

protection are inadequate to provide the landscape structure necessary

to maintain forest ecosystem processes. It is not enough to preserve

11% of the landscape while giving free reign to destroy the rest--

which is apparently the case as Costa Rica has one of the highest

rates of deforestation. The rest of human history will constitute a

vigil to guard what remains of the Earth's biological wealth.

g.b.

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Title: Conservation and Deforestation in Costa Rican Parks

Source: El Planeta Platica

Date: February 1998

Byline: John Burnett

San Jose, Costa Rica - Ricardo Rodriguez sits at a picnic table inside

the national park he manages and watches the blue Pacific pounding the

sickle-shaped beach. Nearby, a white-faced monkey searches for food

scraps, while an iguana lolls in the sun. Visitors awed by the natural

beauty of Manuel Antonio National Park and Costa Rica's other

spectacular wilderness areas don't understand how much trouble they're

in. But Ricardo Rodriguez does.

"They knock on our door everyday and say, 'Hey guys, we need the

money, because that's our land,'" he says.

Twenty-five years after Manuel Antonio was created, it is still only

half paid for. Moreover, 17% of Costa Rica's national parks still

belong to private landowners, who legally have the right to cut timber

on their holdings, though few do.

"They try to tell us, 'We need land for our cattle. We're going to cut

down the trees if you don't pay,'" Rodriguez says. "We say, 'Okay, we

don't have money, we're looking for money. Take it easy.'"

Broken Promises

Internal economic problems and government indifference have put the

parks in peril, say critics. Costa Rica's national debt is devouring

25 cents of every dollar in the treasury. And foreign donations have

begun to dry up as international donors are taking their projects

elsewhere. Interviews with more than two dozen conservationists,

biologists, and government officials reveal serious concerns that this

nation is not living up to its own environmental rhetoric--either in

supporting its famous park system or in halting deforestation.

"The government talks a lot about protected areas, biodiversity,

sustainable development, but the practice is not so good," says Mario

Boza, considered the father of the Costa Rican park system after

he helped create it in the 1970s.

"I think politicians have overestimated what we are doing in

conservation," says Julio Calvo, director of the respected Tropical

Science Center in San Jose. "It's true we're preserving natural

forest, but it's also true that we have not been able to stop

deforestation or the pollution of our rivers."

Even the nation's chief administrator of the protected- areas system

complains that most of the time he feels like just another special

interest begging for attention from the Costa Rican legislature.

"The politicians have recognized that national parks have attracted a

lot of foreign currency because of ecotourism, and they use the

environmental issue in every political campaign," says Carlos Manuel

Rodriguez, who oversees the nation's 1.5 million acres of nature

reserves. "But there is not the political will to really work to

resolve our problems."

Conservationists inside Costa Rica say that the lack of funding for

national parks has reached crisis levels.

"In some areas in those parks we find what we call empty forest," says

Mario Boza. "You see the forest, but there are no animals. They were

hunted. We cannot protect the area."

A few examples:

The number of guards in Corcovado National Park--the crown jewel of

the system--has fallen from 60 to 13.

There are no rangers at Baulas National Marine Park, meaning the park

service is unable to patrol it or charge entrance fees.

Poachers are looting sea-turtle nests on the unprotected beaches of

Tortuguero National Park, on the Atlantic Coast.

"In Tortuguero, maybe one percent of the coastline is guarded," says

Leslie du Tout, a South African sea-turtle activist who lives in Costa

Rica. "We walked about a mile and a half of the beach and found seven

(endangered) leatherback (sea turtle) nests, and all of them had been

robbed."

It's not that the parks cannot pay for themselves: they earned US$4

million last year in entrance and research fees. But Costa Rica's

cash-poor central government has to raid these earnings in order to

pay for other urgent national needs.

"There's not enough money for the roads, so the roads have potholes,"

says Amos Bien, director of the Association of Costa Rican Private

Nature Preserves. "Everybody is protesting, so the government takes

money from some things and puts it into potholes. The schools are

having problems, so the government makes a big effort there. Then the

hospitals are having problems. Well, some of the national parks

haven't been paid for. You can pay for the parks, but you have to take

it from something else. And it goes around and around and around."

Accomplishments

Costa Rica--a country smaller than West Virginia--has more bird

species than the US and Canada combined. To its credit, this nation

has taken advantage of this extraordinary biodiversity by creating one

of the most extensive protected- areas systems in the world. Eleven

percent of its territory has been set aside for national parks; that

is the equivalent of the US declaring all of Texas and Oklahoma as

nature preserves. Costa Rica accomplished this in the 1970s and 1980s,

when coffee and cattle prices were good, international aid was

generous, and the country could afford to buy up undeveloped

wilderness.

The environmental record of a small Central American republic might

not seem important, but Costa Rica is held to a higher standard. It is

looked to as a model by the rest of Latin America. Its stable

democracy, strong middle class, high literacy, and its brain trust of

skilled biologists have earned it tens of millions of dollars in

international environmental aid. If conservation is going to work

anywhere, experts say, it is supposed to work in Costa Rica--which has

dubbed itself a "laboratory for sustainable development."

"We've done, in a lot of ways, as much as we can," says Katrina

Brandon, a conservation biologist at the University of Maryland and an

expert on sustainable development in Central America. "What's required

now is an extraordinary demonstration of political will. And unless

that political will is forthcoming, then you're not going to get

effective conservation in the country. People know what needs to be

done, but it's just not happening."

Nature tourism has now become Costa Rica's richest industry, earning

US$700 million last year, even surpassing bananas and coffee exports.

Costa Rican conservationists hope the country realizes it will have to

take better care of its renowned wilderness areas if it wants the

tourists to keep coming.

Deforestation

Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica - In the 12 years he has been crisscrossing

the Osa Peninsula as an air-taxi pilot and environmentalist, Alvaro

Ramirez has noticed a dramatic change in the densely forested hills

below.

"Look!" he says, pointing to a brown stream bisecting the velvet green

landscape. "This is one of the tributaries to the Rio Tigre. This road

is where the tractor goes up to cut wood. See it? It's a new road.

Look there, where they take out the wood. They're not supposed to cut

there, it is too close to the river."

Through the windshield of his Cessna, we can see ahead of us the

sumptuous forest canopy of Corcovado National Park, which is still

protected from timber cutting. But directly below, loggers have been

looting the forest reserve surrounding the park, which provides

critical additional habitat.

The hilltops are checkered with clear-cuts that look like soccer

fields; from them lead logging roads and "trails," as Ramirez calls

them. We turn around and head for the airstrip in the trading center

of Puerto Jimenez. Ramirez stares ahead, a look of resignation on his

face. "They are clear-cutting the watersheds," he says.

The Osa Peninsula is one of the largest expanses of lowland tropical

forest left in Central America. Jutting off the Pacific Coast just

above Panama, the Osa is Costa Rica's poorest, most remote--and in

biological terms--its wildest province. Down here, jaguars still come

out on the beach to hunt. Scarlet macaws and toucans are as common as

sparrows. It is home to the world's largest pit viper, the

bushmaster-- an eight-foot monster they call "matabuey," ox killer in

Spanish. And on the Osa, the forest canopy rises taller than anywhere

else in Costa Rica owing to the abundant rainfall.

Consumers certainly benefit from the giant hardwoods waiting their

turn at the sawmill. In the hands of artisans, they become doors,

credenzas, banisters, and floorboards. But environmentalists on the

Osa rarely see the end product. They see what is left behind.

"We are standing right here by the banks of this river right now

looking at the erosion, this water is chocolate brown," says a

Greenpeace activist named Joel Stewart, who lives on the Osa when he

is not at sea working as captain of the organization's ship, the

Rainbow Warrior. He is looking at a muddy torrent that drains an

upland region that has been heavily logged recently.

"One thing that bothers me a lot is the last coral reef in the Golfo

Dulce region," says Stewart, referring to the body of water that

separates the Osa Peninsula from the mainland. "It is dying because of

the sedimentation. You go out and dive on this reef and it is covered

with silt, which is choking it to death. Other reefs around the gulf

have already died because of sedimentation."

Stewart says Costa Rica is hypocritical if it continues to promote

itself internationally as an environmental haven, yet it is "only

going to preserve what is in the parks as a type of biological zoo and

allow everything else to be cut."

When the contralto whine of the chain saw starts to echo in the rain

forests of Costa Rica, conservationists have learned to fear the

worst. Over the past three decades, this country had the foresight to

protect large tracts of wilderness by creating a system of nature

preserves that comprise 11% of the national territory.

Yet while conservationists were setting aside some forestland, cattle

ranchers were mowing it down elsewhere, giving Costa Rica one of the

highest rates of deforestation in the Americas. Here, as elsewhere in

the region, government policies rewarded landowners for converting

forest into what was considered "productive" land--namely, cattle

ranches. Today, almost all the virgin forest outside national parks is

gone, or going fast.

"Even though there are not enough park guards, we can guarantee there

is no logging in national parks," says Carlos Herrera, who headed the

park service in 1994. "But the rest of the land is simply not

protected. It is in danger."

Environmental Law

A new forestry law passed last year by the Costa Rican parliament

includes innovative economic incentives for landowners to preserve

these fast-disappearing woodlands. But another section of the same

law--reportedly crafted by the timber industry--encourages

deforestation.

"Unfortunately, we have a new forestry law that does not benefit us.

On the contrary, it has made the problem worse," says Cecelia Solano

of the Association for the Defense of Natural Resources of the Osa.

"The new law has been a disgrace for this country, for the forests,

and for those of us responsible for conserving for the next

generation."

Under the old law, landowners had to request timber- cutting permits

from federal forestry engineers in San Jose. But the procedure was

slow and riddled with corruption. To decentralize the permit process,

lawmakers took away the federal authority, and split it between the

municipalities and private forestry engineers. Critics say the result

has been chaos: the municipalities are handing out permits, though

they have no experience in forest management, and the private

foresters, known in Spanish as "regentes," are just as corrupt as the

federal foresters were.

A former national park guard, who requested his name not be used, has

come to a riverbank deep in the Osa, to show what he considers proof

of how regentes abuse their authority.

"In the Osa, the permits appear to be legal. But they are done under

the table," he says. "We are standing within 10 meters of the Rio

Tigre, where it is illegal to cut trees, and we can see the stumps of

a Guanacaste tree and a Guallabon tree that have been cut. These

regentes sell these management plans for sausage (Costa Rican slang

for bribes), and they allow the illegal extraction of wood."

The government acknowledges the new forestry law has caused problems.

Environmental Minister Rene Castro says his office has filed charges

against several private foresters and complained to the national

forestry college about others.

"We know there are abuses and we have sent the accused regentes to the

tribunals," he says, in an interview in his office in San Jose. "But

part of the complaints about illegal tree felling is simply ignorance.

There will always be trucks carrying logs out of the Osa, because some

have permits. There is a mixture of valid and invalid complaints."

While the government defends itself and environmentalists fume, small

landowners in the Osa applaud the new rules, which have made it easier

for them to cut and sell timber.

"There is a lot of poverty. Old friends I grew up with have left their

farms because they couldn't make it, because of conservation," says

Freddy Gonzalez, who lives near the community of Rio Nuevo, in the

heart of the Osa Peninsula. "We have to sell a little wood to survive.

Let me tell you something, mister. The monkeys can eat fruit, but

human beings cannot. We have more needs."

The situation has quieted for the moment on the Osa Peninsula. In late

August, as public outcry and international attention intensified,

Environment Minister Rene Castro imposed a temporary timber-cutting

ban in the Osa and created a commission to investigate reports of

illegal logging. Environmentalists have cautiously praised the

moratorium, although they are worried what will happen when it

expires.

Meanwhile, concerned residents near other Costa Rican forests being

ravaged by loggers have reportedly asked the government to extend the

timber ban to their regions as well.

The author is a correspondent for National Public Radio in the United

States.

Email: JBURNETT@npr.org

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