Trouble in Paradise / Critics say lack of protection endangers Costa Rica's famed nature preserves
Manuel Antonio National Park. Chronicle Graphi
Politicians in this small Central American nation love to boast about how much national territory has been set aside for conservation.
And they have plenty to brag about. Costa Rica, a country the size of West Virginia with just 3.5 million inhabitants, is known worldwide as a leader in preserving its nature areas. It draws 1 million tourists each year to see its scenic beaches, rain forests, mountains and exotic wildlife such as howler monkeys, poison dart frogs and bright-billed toucans. The $1 billion-a-year tourism business is the second-largest source of income for the country, after silicon wafers produced by the microchip giant, Intel.
"We are killing the goose that laid the golden egg," said Jose Antonio Salazar, director of Manuel Antonio National Park, the country's most visited and most threatened nature area.
Environmentalists blame a lack of manpower for increased poaching and a recent loss of forest lands on what they call "legal deforestation."
At Tortuguero National Park on the Caribbean coast, there are only 10 full- time employees to protect the most important nesting site in the Western Hemisphere for the endangered green turtle. Eduardo Chamorro, the park's director, says he has been forced to recruit volunteers to help his rangers patrol seven miles of beach to nab egg poachers during nesting season.
Many local environmentalists are also upset that the government allows private landowners to cut small numbers of trees for sale as lumber on land that has been set aside for conservation. They say there are few controls and landowners often cut as much as they want.
At the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve on the southern Pacific Coast, 16,000 trees have been legally cut down in the past three years. "A lot of these areas are under conservation (protection) only on paper," said Quirico Jimenez, a botanist at the National Institute of Biodiversity in San Jose.
Manuel Antonio National Park, for example, receives less than 5 percent of revenues from its $6 entrance fee, according to park director Salazar.
"We are a developing country. A lack of resources is our reality," explained Ivan Vincenti, vice minister of the environment, who said national park revenues are often siphoned to finance education and health programs. "But if we consider the budgets of other countries, it is very likely that Costa Rica, in real terms, spends far more on the environment than others."
To be sure, many environmentalists have hailed Costa Rica as a pioneer in environmental protection since the national parks system was created in 1969 to prevent the destruction of wilderness areas. Twelve percent of the nation is legally protected as national parks, and another 16 percent as Indian reserves, biological reserves, wildlife refuges and wildlife corridors. There are at least 33 national parks and reserves.
"For a country its size, the absolute number of protected areas, the great ecological diversity and the impressive comprehensiveness of the (national parks) system are world-class," said Gary Hartshorn, president of the Organization of Tropical Studies, a nonprofit group with three biological stations in Costa Rica.
The World Bank recently awarded Costa Rica a $40 million loan – $8 million of which is destined to finance the nation's innovative program of paying landowners not to cut down their forests.
"This is a revolutionary concept," said Gerardo Budowski, former director general of the World Conservation Union in Switzerland.
But others are not so enthusiastic about the future.
Stanley Arguedas, the former director of Corcovado National Park on the southern Pacific coast, questions how politicians can boast about Costa Rica's conservation programs when some park officials are hard pressed to find funds to stock park bathrooms with toilet paper.
Moreover, a recent environment ministry report shows that the government still owes $655 million to hundreds of property owners for land expropriated for conservation.
In fact, of the 3.2 million acres that have been set aside for conservation,
44 percent, or 1.4 million acres, is still in the hands of the many farmers who resided on the properties long before they were declared conservation areas.
Some observers say the nation's supreme court may be the only entity that can force the government to pay its ecological debt. In 1997, the court ordered the government to pay several hundred landowners from the Golfo Dulce Forest Reserve for their properties, plus damages for being banned from working their land for the past 22 years. The amount has yet to be determined.
While these lands are technically protected from development, landowners in national parks such as Manuel Antonio have found ways to skirt the law.
The small park, which is situated near the Pacific coastal town of Puerto Quepos, is heavily populated by monkeys and has three beautiful beaches fringed with coconut palms.
Despite the restricted status of land in the park's surrounding buffer zones, the Puerto Quepos municipality has freely doled out building permits for small hotels. Local politicians have been accused by the local media of corruption for issuing the construction permits and allowing landowners to downgrade the conservation status of their properties so they can develop them.
As a result, the park has lost 500 acres in recent years, and sewage from 140 hotels winds up in the ocean, said park director Salazar.
"Maybe they (the landowners) can't build major developments, but they can make roads and trails and do other small projects," said Salazar.
Even those in the tourist industry are angry."When I first came here 15 years ago, none of the development you see was here," said Sheryl Livingstone, the manager of the Hotel Villas Nicolas. "Sometimes, I think they (politicians) want Costa Rica to become another Acapulco."
Ironically, Manuel Antonio, which attracts some 150,000 tourists annually, is one of the few parks that can generate enough funds to pay landowners not to exploit the area. Nearly three years ago, a group of concerned citizens set up a trust fund to ensure that 50 percent of ticket revenues be reinvested in the park. However, a political squabble between the municipality and the environment ministry over who will control the monies has kept the funds in escrow.
In the meantime, the environment ministry has just completed a nationwide land management plan that spells out clearly what landowners in conservation areas can and cannot do.
"The problem is, we have a system on paper that supposes a ministerial structure, a quantity of resources and personnel that in reality we don't have, " said the environment ministry's Vincenti.