Hoy el bosque me ganó. To start off the day I had an amazing breakfast at the hotel, with pancakes (10/10), a breakfast wrap, and fruit. Today we went on trail in the Monteverde Cloud Forest National Park, where I got extremely muddy. Honestly, I don’t even know how I got THAT much mud on me but my shoes need to be cleaned… BADLY. After we went back to the hotel to relax and work on our projects. And then we ended the day with a sustainability lecture at Monteverde Institute (MVI).
To start off, we walked around the national park and tried to find some animals. The reserve covers 10,500 hectares with about 50% of Costa Rica’s biodiversity. Our main goal was to see a Resplendent Quetzal. This goal sadly did not happen, though we found the nest, we did not wait long enough to see it emerge. We did however see other birds such as the Bellbird, we also got to see a white-faced capuchin monkey! There was a group there that had already been waiting for hours to see the quetzal, so it takes a long time to see one. This alone shows the level of demand placed on this ecosystem. People travel from all over the world and wait hours just for a glimpse of one bird. Multiply that by every group visiting daily and it becomes clear why restrictions are not just helpful, but necessary. However, humans strain the forest and disturb the wildlife. For example, our group was big and talked a bit too loud, so the birds would fly away and we were simply unable to see much due to us scaring them. That’s only one group, imagine many others that might disturb the flora and fauna. Due to this, they have introduced timed tickets and restricted trail access to manage the over-tourism before the damage cannot be fixed. When we went, our guide Josue had to “check in” for us before we could go and he said the one trail is now ticketed. Along with this, we were subjected to only one trail, there would be other paths blocked with a restricted sign.
After working on our project, we went to a lecture at MVI. At the lecture we learned some more about Costa Rica and their biodiversity and sustainability. We learned that they have 8 indigenous groups, most of them on the Caribbean side. We also learned that Costa Rica has more species of trees than Canada and the US combined. This just goes to show how bio diverse Costa Rica is, with just 2% of the world’s biodiversity being simply in Monteverde (yes that much in only one region). We also learned that pineapple plantations are very harmful to Costa Rica due to their use of pesticides and monoculture, Costa Rica uses the most agrochemicals in the world. The institute has an adopt-a-stream program where they teach kids about the rivers around them, why they are important, how to solve polluted waters, setting them up to protect them.
Due to over-tourism, ecotourism businesses and parks have tried to put limits on visitors to combat this before the damage is irreversible. As mentioned before, the national park has put restrictions on their visitors, and many others are following suit. These restrictions are an act of good stewardship because of the insane growth in visitors and climate change. The visitors went from 2,700 in 1980 to 250,000 by 2019. Josue mentioned that in the past, visitors could walk both the continental divide trail and the main trail in one visit. Now you have to choose one or the other, and whichever you pick is a set trail with little room to walk off the path. He also had to check in, getting some type of paper/ticket from the worker. These restrictions are necessary to lessen the amount of visitors and the impact that they may have on the nature by wandering off. Good stewardship though, means that the locals/community are involved, which MVI prides themselves in. At MVI, they try to create public spaces for the community to get together and get involved. However, we also learned that sometimes the indigenous people are not asked about projects on their land. True stewardship is not just about protecting nature from visitors, but ensuring that the people most connected to the land have a say in how it is protected.
Today was a productive and nice day. I saw two rainbows today, which has to be a good sign. I finished my project and I got to see monkeys. Wish me luck on the presentation tomorrow! Nos vemos al otro lado de la presentación.
