Back in the Carara

I've returned again to the place of my first tropical rainforest immersion. Luck brought me to Costa Rica for the first time in 2001. I was a second year assistant professor of political science and a faculty member of our small environmental science and policy graduate program. The latter part was enough to warrant an offer from a business instructor I had never met. She asked if I would be interested in joining a study abroad trip to Costa Rica? I doubt I hesitated. I could do policy stuff, another professor the environmental science, and she’ll handle the economics. She knew a Park in Costa Rica we could do volunteer work for. We attracted more than 25 undergraduates and off we went.

We traveled to Carara, a central Pacific National Park encompassing nearly twelve thousand acres of rainforest ranging from sea level to the foothills of Turrialba mountain and the beginning of the Talamanca range. It’s located south of the Rio Tarcoles and a population of endangered crocs and like Costa Rica bridging North and South America, this transitional forest was an intersection of the tropical wet ecosystems of the south with the tropical dry habitats in the northwest. Therefore, it hosts a great concentration of biodiversity, a kind of microcosm of Costa Rica itself, and includes one of the country’s last habitats for scarlet macaws. The Carara name derives from an indigenous language that would translate as “river of crocodiles”, and many guide books describe the Park as a wildlife oasis. But in reality this park is an ecological island.

On Carara’s eastern borders, agriculture dominates the rural highlands with pasture fences marking the Park’s edges. To the south, the real estate bubble went global and luxury housing developments have sprung up like an invasive species. But the most significant border is on Carara’s western edge. Highway 34 cuts this terrestrial ecosystem off from the coastal plain to the west. A new road brings even more traffic from the central valley to the Pacific coast.

Ten years ago, there were an estimated 200 Scarlet Macaws. Today, their numbers have doubled and I'm proud that my students have had a small part in this conservation success. But there are new challenges. While the Scarlet Macaws fly effortlessly through the surrounding human developments, mammals, amphibians and snakes don’t fare so well. The tragic pictures below are from last week as an ocelot mother and her juvenile didn’t make their dash off the island. The linked article is more bad news. The road takes on average 16 animals a month. This may become our next collaborative project with Carara.



http://www.nacion.com/2010-06-16/AldeaGlobal/NotasSecundarias/AldeaGlobal2410065.aspx