The Good News: Costa Rica Guards Its Forests

When a fungal disease began ravaging Levi Bryant's four-hectare cacao farm a decade ago, the landowner could have done what other besieged farmers have done. He might easily have picked up an ax and begun cutting down more tropical rain forest around his land on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast.
He could have sold the timber from the tall laurel trees that shade the cacao bushes, then burned the dense virgin forest on the hill behind his farm. Then Bryant, like so many financially strapped small farmers in Latin America, could have sown pasture and sold the land to cattle rancher. Within three or four years, one more small piece of the tropics would have vanished.

That Bryant did not rush headlong down this slippery ecological slope is in part testimony to Costa Rica's commitment to its dwindling natural resources. The country has more than 20 national parks, wildlife preserves and other protected areas covering 2,577 sq. mi, or 13% of the land. Moreover, the nation's stable democracy has attracted hundreds of scientists and ecologists, making Costa Rica a laboratory for finding out what is possible in terms of sustainable development in the tropics.

One of the major reasons Bryant's plantation is not a fast-eroding cow pasture is that he got help from an environmental group called Anai (which means "friend" in the language of the local Bribri Indians). "We probably wouldn't still be farming if it wasn't for these guys," admits Bryant. Anai provided him with new kinds of crops, including vanilla plants and a different variety of cacao tree, which is less likely to die from fungus. Over the past five years, Anai has brought dozens of new varieties of cash crops to more than 20 communities in the Talamanca region, set up plant nurseries serving 1,500 people, and helped establish a 10,000-hectare wildlife refuge.

The encroachment of cow pastures on the cloud forest at Monteverde spurred another of Costa Rica's efforts to save its natural heritage. In 1972, 350 hectares of land owned by American Quakers who had settled the region in the 1950s were set aside as a private reserve. Over the years that has grown to 10,500 hectares. One key to preserving this huge area was to allow local people to develop a tourist business. In five years the annual number of visitors has gone from 6,000 to 15,000, and could climb to more than 30,000 when a new road up from the plain is built.
That success shows that forests can produce income without being destroyed.