In the final days of our 2010 excursion, we woke before dawn to a silent block of modest homes and cabinas in Tarcoles town. It was the end of our 2010 field work and our final excursion was helping kick off the annual Scarlet Macaw count held in August around Carara National Park. During the next three hours, we would watch the forest come alive from our vista high above the mangroves and river on our right, the town of Tarcoles in front of us, the Nicoya gulf and Peninsula forming the distant horizon, and the mix of forest fragments broken by pastures and housing developments stretching south. Behind us was Carara, the core of these biological and social communities.
Like the tide coming in that morning, waves of life would emerge from the dark green hues of the trees below us. We were strategically located on a hill allowing a view of one of three flyways the Scarlet Macaws of Carara used for their morning commute. After spending the night in the protected mangroves and along the Tarcoles river, the Macaws would spread across this region in search of food. But the white egrets were the first sights as they floated in small flocks moving north and south to and from the ox bowed river. A pair of white and black ducks fooled me as I strained to sight the first Macaws. They were moving too fast I thought to myself. The early darkness would not yet easily reveal the Lapa’s reds, yellows, and blues.
Cloudy banks of mist hovered in patches over the trees. More light came. Then, the call of a Macaw pierced through the sounds of the distant waves. It’s likely mate squawked back. Their squawks are difficult to describe but perhaps something like the scraping sound of a warped wooden chair sliding across bare floor. I peered uneasily through my binoculars and struggled to focus on the still shadowy canopy. Dropping them for a few seconds, I realized again how Costa Rica’s rainforest was a unique prism revealing our world in its many hues. In the morning light overlooking the jungle canvas, life began to explode before our eyes. It is only in this ecosystem one fully understands biodiversity at its climax. Here in the tropics, the pathbreaking scholars of evolution and ecology would forge their influential theories.
I soon sighted the morning’s first pair of macaws with my naked eyes. After a closer look through my binocular lenses, “one pair” (una pareja) I shouted to our record keeper. One of my students soon confirmed the couple departing the mangroves for points south. The sighting was relayed by walkie talkie to the count’s coordinator. The macaws kept soaring. Two, no, three more pairs. A rare quartet. More pairs. Sad Solos. This is nothing like the monotony of my home in the northwest where, like the thousands of seagulls around my balcony, a few species dominate. From this natural balcony near Carara, I saw egrets, pelicans on the coast, vultures, waves of green Amazonian parrots, a great blue heron, a massive wood stork, solitary flycatchers, and many more. Carara and its surrounding landscapes are home to more than 360 bird species.
Then, a falling tree groaned to its death towards the river and sent five Lapas fleeing. We recorded 86 Lapa Rojas that morning. But numbers, words and pictures could never do these sights and sounds justice. Only after engaging all of your senses will you begin to grasp the complexity of the flora and fauna of the rainforest. Darwin made the following observation in 1893. “In tropical forests, when quietly walking along the shady pathways, and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delights which the mind experiences.” Immersion in these rainforests and communities may also help you gain a new perspective, a prism to begin seeing the world differently.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A New Perspective
A New Perspective
Connor Harron
So many wealthy faces,
Still dominated by gloomy traces,
But laughter and smiles abound,
Smothering those where money rarely comes round.
Simple pleasures through and through,
No distractions to break the glue.
How do we justify our lives,
If we consume enough to destroy our hive,
But self report,
That we no longer have cohorts.
How do we learn from our mistakes,
And create something beautiful for our children to take?
Many call our society individually driven,
But the commons only thrive when we have given,
Our cooperation,
Not corporation.
Altruism is a false label,
Which exhausts motivation before we are able,
To change more than the cable.
However, a new perspective will show,
That our success’s are linked more than we know,
So maybe to truly be egoistic,
We need to be more realistic.
Our system is broken,
With so much, our lives are still tokens,
Pawns in a transnational corporate battle,
We need citizens not cattle.
There may not be a simple solution,
But if we focus on a local notion,
A Grameen model for a new revolution,
Support for any creative resolution.
We can work together on these issues daunting,
For we share desires to promote clotting,
Of wounds long unhealed,
A new perspective can bring us together sealed.
In a world so bright,
The darkness is surprisingly tight,
But so quickly can it turn light,
A prism in the night,
Needs but one shaft to arc,
A million separate sparks.
Connor Harron
So many wealthy faces,
Still dominated by gloomy traces,
But laughter and smiles abound,
Smothering those where money rarely comes round.
Simple pleasures through and through,
No distractions to break the glue.
How do we justify our lives,
If we consume enough to destroy our hive,
But self report,
That we no longer have cohorts.
How do we learn from our mistakes,
And create something beautiful for our children to take?
Many call our society individually driven,
But the commons only thrive when we have given,
Our cooperation,
Not corporation.
Altruism is a false label,
Which exhausts motivation before we are able,
To change more than the cable.
However, a new perspective will show,
That our success’s are linked more than we know,
So maybe to truly be egoistic,
We need to be more realistic.
Our system is broken,
With so much, our lives are still tokens,
Pawns in a transnational corporate battle,
We need citizens not cattle.
There may not be a simple solution,
But if we focus on a local notion,
A Grameen model for a new revolution,
Support for any creative resolution.
We can work together on these issues daunting,
For we share desires to promote clotting,
Of wounds long unhealed,
A new perspective can bring us together sealed.
In a world so bright,
The darkness is surprisingly tight,
But so quickly can it turn light,
A prism in the night,
Needs but one shaft to arc,
A million separate sparks.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Rain for 3 nights, 2 days
We finally got some sun back today. The rains came from an offshore tropical depression and reminded us that we were in a rainforest. Perhaps it was payback for our first day. We saw all four species of monkeys. Toucans, macaws, and herons. Bull sharks and crocodiles and even a large one chomping on a smaller croc in a scene worthy of animal planet. But we didn't find a tapir. It found us late on our first night. We had more tapirs yesterday and today, and an army ant column followed by a crew of birds to mop up. Three days to go.
Troy
Troy
El Sur: Where Local is trying to Find a Home in a Global World
Connor Harron
Situated in the foothills of the Central Pacific, El Sur is a small community of agriculturalists living on the northern edge of Carara National Park, Costa Rica. We visited the town in order to get a taste of Costa Rica pre Huggie Billboard signs and Nativa resort communities, where the only sign of tico’s (Costa Ricans) can be found in the kitchen or maintenance facilities. In El Sur everyone is local, and several of the families are related. The village consists of several family homes, a community center where everyone shares their meals together, a church, one school (with nine students), a pulperia or general store complete with a rustic pool table where nightly games can be shared with the local population of giant moths and disco-teca music, and a generous set of accommodations for visitors called Eco Sur. El Sur has been around for generations, and the families there were almost all subsistence farmers. That is until the creation of Carara National Park.
During the formation of Costa Rica’s National Park system much of the land needed in order to create these reserves had to be taken from people who already inhabited them. El Sur was one of them. A large portion of El Sur’s agricultural land used to grow sustenance crops were designated as National Park, no say was given to the community in this process, and to my awareness no compensation has yet to be given. However, the people at El Sur have dealt with hardships before, and while some families left, those who stayed tried to make the best of things by growing new crops that could better suit the communities diminished lands. But along with the creation of the National Park came the animals, and many crops were destroyed by grazing omnivores seeking food that El Sur sought to claim. These animals, under new laws were protected from the community, and killing ones that attacked their crops was forbidden. So again this sustainable community was thwarted in their attempts to preserve their way of life, and in the name of preservation.
Once again more families left in order to find an easier way of life. However, those who stayed desired more then ever to preserve their community so that their children and their children’s children would have the chance to live as purely as they felt they had. In a last ditch attempt to generate enough communal income to support their needs, El Sur created a partnership with an NGO called Global Aware in order to create Eco Sur. This partnership has provided El Sur with a tourism industry which acts to give people like us the chance to see how real tico’s live (d?) and an idea of what it takes to be part of a cooperative community.
During our short stay we had the opportunity to eat as a community with these people. We went to school with their children, taught them about the environment, learned that they were already more connected to the forest than we could have imagined, and planted trees together as a group. We saw their sugar cane plantation and witnessed first hand the ox driven process of extracting the sweet liquid from the stalk, and then the 10 hour process of boiling down and extracting the “good stuff” before tasting and buying much of their days work. In El Sur the excess sugar product is used to feed the pigs, and the leftover stalk acts as the only organic fertilizer they use/need to create some of the finest brown sugar that has ever met my palate.
In a world dominated by globalization El Sur has managed, at least for now, to take ownership of their land and preserve their way of life while still interacting with the outside world. Many places have not been so fortunate, and in a place like Costa Rica where tourism competes for the title as the nations largest economic sector, Americanization is everywhere. There is a fine line to play when integrating societies so that we can maintain our cultural identity while interacting on a multi-international scale. I have heard one of the greatest atrocities of the 21st century being described as “the sense of being homeless in your own home.” This is something that many tico’s are experiencing on a daily basis and will be a major struggle for Costa Rica in this century, but I believe that places such as El Sur are examples of good partnerships that can develop without the marginalization of locals. If Costa Ricans can take back ownership of their development and industries, they may be able to preserve a semblance of what was the Green Republic while creating a society that is more “glocal” than the corporate dream of expanding the Great Wall of condominiums and McMansions unbroken from the Baja peninsula, to Costa Rica and beyond.
Situated in the foothills of the Central Pacific, El Sur is a small community of agriculturalists living on the northern edge of Carara National Park, Costa Rica. We visited the town in order to get a taste of Costa Rica pre Huggie Billboard signs and Nativa resort communities, where the only sign of tico’s (Costa Ricans) can be found in the kitchen or maintenance facilities. In El Sur everyone is local, and several of the families are related. The village consists of several family homes, a community center where everyone shares their meals together, a church, one school (with nine students), a pulperia or general store complete with a rustic pool table where nightly games can be shared with the local population of giant moths and disco-teca music, and a generous set of accommodations for visitors called Eco Sur. El Sur has been around for generations, and the families there were almost all subsistence farmers. That is until the creation of Carara National Park.
During the formation of Costa Rica’s National Park system much of the land needed in order to create these reserves had to be taken from people who already inhabited them. El Sur was one of them. A large portion of El Sur’s agricultural land used to grow sustenance crops were designated as National Park, no say was given to the community in this process, and to my awareness no compensation has yet to be given. However, the people at El Sur have dealt with hardships before, and while some families left, those who stayed tried to make the best of things by growing new crops that could better suit the communities diminished lands. But along with the creation of the National Park came the animals, and many crops were destroyed by grazing omnivores seeking food that El Sur sought to claim. These animals, under new laws were protected from the community, and killing ones that attacked their crops was forbidden. So again this sustainable community was thwarted in their attempts to preserve their way of life, and in the name of preservation.
Once again more families left in order to find an easier way of life. However, those who stayed desired more then ever to preserve their community so that their children and their children’s children would have the chance to live as purely as they felt they had. In a last ditch attempt to generate enough communal income to support their needs, El Sur created a partnership with an NGO called Global Aware in order to create Eco Sur. This partnership has provided El Sur with a tourism industry which acts to give people like us the chance to see how real tico’s live (d?) and an idea of what it takes to be part of a cooperative community.
During our short stay we had the opportunity to eat as a community with these people. We went to school with their children, taught them about the environment, learned that they were already more connected to the forest than we could have imagined, and planted trees together as a group. We saw their sugar cane plantation and witnessed first hand the ox driven process of extracting the sweet liquid from the stalk, and then the 10 hour process of boiling down and extracting the “good stuff” before tasting and buying much of their days work. In El Sur the excess sugar product is used to feed the pigs, and the leftover stalk acts as the only organic fertilizer they use/need to create some of the finest brown sugar that has ever met my palate.
In a world dominated by globalization El Sur has managed, at least for now, to take ownership of their land and preserve their way of life while still interacting with the outside world. Many places have not been so fortunate, and in a place like Costa Rica where tourism competes for the title as the nations largest economic sector, Americanization is everywhere. There is a fine line to play when integrating societies so that we can maintain our cultural identity while interacting on a multi-international scale. I have heard one of the greatest atrocities of the 21st century being described as “the sense of being homeless in your own home.” This is something that many tico’s are experiencing on a daily basis and will be a major struggle for Costa Rica in this century, but I believe that places such as El Sur are examples of good partnerships that can develop without the marginalization of locals. If Costa Ricans can take back ownership of their development and industries, they may be able to preserve a semblance of what was the Green Republic while creating a society that is more “glocal” than the corporate dream of expanding the Great Wall of condominiums and McMansions unbroken from the Baja peninsula, to Costa Rica and beyond.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Safe and sound at Sirena
The hikers and boaters have all arrived safely at the Sirena Biological Station in Corcovado National Park. The station now has wireless and a public phone! Stay tuned for more blogs.
Pura vida
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Out of the Park
Troy D. Abel, July 11, 2010
Since 2003, I have led over 100 students into the rainforests of Costa Rica and its national parks. Participants combined readings, reflection, and a service-learning project supporting two park’s efforts to protect biodiversity while also educating surrounding communities about rainforest conservation. For about one half of the experience, students conducted a variety of monitoring and education projects allowing them to learn firsthand about the interactions of environmental science and conservation policy in another culture. We voluntarily worked on improving trails and park facilities for the other half of the experience.
But three weeks before our 2008 trip, everything changed. Our planned 10 day stay and service in the Sirena Biological Station in the middle of Corcovado National Park was trumped by an emergency conference for park rangers. Consequently, our Costa Rica tour company (Endemico), arranged 7 days in Dante’s Corcovado Lodge in the village of Guadalupe near the park’s border. We again spent half of the trip investigating the reserve’s ecological condition but in the other half our service work focused on the community. Over six days, six houses were painted, we taught in the local school, 27 students were transformed, and I began to realize that there could be many environmental service-learning opportunities outside the park.
I am particularly interested in how I can strengthen the service-learning aspect of the RICA program so that it foster a more globally, yet civically-minded student. These kind of learners will recognize that they: “. . . cannot flourish unless the communities to which [they] belong flourish, and it is [their] (enlightened) self-interest to become a more responsible member of those communities—whether they are [their] school, [their] neighborhood or [their] nation (and perhaps even [their] world)” (Barber and Bettistoni, 1992, p. 237. In a world shrinking because of globalization, our students need experiences that expand their notions of citizenship from the local to the ecological, and to the global.
So this year, we intentionally ventured out of the parks for five days of our program and immersed ourselves in two communities near our two parks—El Sur and Guadalupe. In the former, we learned about their community’s cooperative called Ecosur that aims to develop sustainable agriculture and tourism opportunities to keep families from leaving the area. We also delivered an experiential education program about the importance of trees to eight elementary students from the community. And we dined in the community center, slept in the community lodge, and brought a small part of our economic impact to the families of El Sur. We just finished doing the same in Guadalupe.
Tomorrow, we go back into Corcovado National Park; a place that National Geographic called the most biologically intense place on the planet.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Sam's blog
Today is Thursday July 1st, and it is our 9th day in Costa Rica. The weather has been extremely humid and hot, even when the sun doesn’t shine. This is however what allows for the abundant jungle that we came to see, the sun’s energy sustains the jungle. Having spent most of my time in Costa Rica’s most dense and diverse protected zone, I have seen a lot of animals so far, some of which include: Scarlet Macaws, parakeets, herons, tons of other colorful birds, crocodiles, crabs, lizards up to 3 feet in length, geckos, agoutis, spider monkeys, white face monkeys, various snakes, coromoundi (not sure how it is spelled), sloths, and many other exotic animals. To fauna is beautiful and the insects are numerous, no amount of spray will protect from the mosquitoes and other random biters. So far three tarantulas have been seen in the house, one has been with us the whole time and is currently duct taped into a hole. We have all gotten pretty used to the bugs and wildlife here, it’s a necessity when you live in the same room as them. Beside the constant sweating, cold showers, and bugs, this trip has been remarkably fun and exciting. Our first weekend was spent in the canopy zip lines, and a few nights have been in the bars. A lot of interesting food has been available and we have safe water. Tonight we leave to a nearby city for a night, it will be awesome to get a real shower for the first time in a week.
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