Costa Rica Restores Lost Forest

This recovery is due environmental policy and the decrease of cattle ranching activities, with Guanacaste, the Caribbean and the southern zone having the most success.

Today, half of Costa Rica land is forest, thanks to the restoring of an area that equals a 10% of national territory. This is backed up by images analyzed by the Fondo Nacional de Financiamiento Forestal (Forest Financing National Fund), (Fonafifo) and the Canadian University of Alberta.

In 1960, 70% of the country was covered by forest, but in the following three decades that percentage decreased to a 40% due to an intensive deforestation.

According to Arturo Sanchez, director of the Centro de Ciencias de Observacion Terrestre (Terrestrial Observation Science Center) of the University of Alberta, the tree felling in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s was a consequence of agrarian development.

He added that in that time the only way to own a agriculture field that didn’t have an owner was to “improve it” in most cases it meant cutting trees and stock breeding. This is how a mayor part of Guanacaste was deforested to give way to the expansion of cattle breeding. In the south zone and Caribbean it happened with single-crop farming.

Reversion

The process to revert deforestation began in the 90’s. According to Fonafifo, on 1997 the forest coverage increased to a 42%, 2000 it went up to a 47% and last year to a 51%.

Today, forest covers 26,000 square kilometers of the 51,000 km of the country. The Fonafifo is a premise of the Ministerio de Ambiente (Ministry of Environment) MINAE, in charge of paying the owners of properties not to cut trees.

Fonafifo pays for the conservation of 3,000 km as well as monitoring the areas with help from the University of Alberta. The places with mayor recovery in the past 5 years have been Guanacaste, the north Caribbean and the south zone, but in Guanacaste’s case, experts recognize that the reversion is because of a decrease in cattle breeding.

For, Fonafifo’s director, Jorge Rodriguez, environmental policies passed in the last few years have helped reforestation. The policies include the payment of incentives to the owners of the fields who preserve and reforest, as well as the prohibition of cutting the forest on their property according to the Forest Law approved in 1996.

Fonafifo uses a budget of 1.4 million yearly to preserve those 3,000 km. Other two factors that support the recovery are environmental conscious and eco- tourism development.

Better Quality

Luis Diego Marin, president of the Asociacion Conservacionista de Flora y Fauna (Conservationist Association of Flora and Fauna) (Aprefloflas), said that the quality of the recovered forest should be checked.

Marin says that many reverted areas are secondary forest that can’t be compared to primary forest, were the log is much wider and the trees are almost 100 years old. He said there has to be a improvement in the forest incentives as well as giving more importance to those who reforest native species and look for foreign private company investment for conservation.

Roberto Dobles, minister of MINAE, stated that the country has to aggressively search for payments of other countries due to Costa Ricas’s environmental benefits and even look for prevented deforestation payments.

Our thanks to Esteban Oviedo and our friends at La Nación – Costa Rica’s largest Spanish circulation newspaper for their permission use this article.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.