I am writing to ask our key supporters for urgent assistance to help preserve a critical area of rainforest in Costa Rica.

Without intervention, the rapid decline in local species such as the Bellbird will continue.

The Bellbird Biological Corridor

We would like to assist our partner organisation, the Monteverde Conservation League (MCL), with an immediate opportunity to acquire an ecologically critical area of land in the Monteverde region.

MCL already owns and manages the First International Children’s Rainforest, or Bosque Eterno de los Ninos (BEN). This is Costa Rica’s largest private reserve of 22,500 hectares, mostly purchased with funds from the International Children’s Rainforest Charity network over 20 years.

This new addition would be a key part of a larger project to preserve a forested area, to be known as the Bellbird Biological Corridor, which will link the Children’s Eternal Forest? across the Continental Divide to the Gulf of Nicoya on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

Why your support is important

This area is vital for the survival of many spectacular tropical birds, animals and insects that need to migrate annually from the rainforest on top of the Continental Divide to the food sources available at lower elevations.

Without these forests further down they simply starve. Yet Monteverde’s Pacific slope, with little of its unique forest type represented elsewhere in Costa Rica, is under significant pressure from development for tourism and commercial purposes. Already, some of the Corridor will need significant regeneration.

Many species are under threat, but the most spectacular of these are the Three-Wattled Bellbird, the Resplendent Quetzal and the Tapir.

Populations of the two bird species are declining rapidly. The forest corridor would provide them with an area rich in wild avocado trees, the fruit of which is their principal food source. In return, they spread the avocado seeds, essential for forest regeneration.

An investment for the future

The Bellbird Biological Corridor is a significant project that will require the purchase of many small areas of land to complete the 10,000 hectare territory to be protected.

A number have already been acquired and MCL now has the opportunity to add another 1,300 hectares in 18 sections.

To do so, MCL needs funds immediately. Any donations you make will go directly towards the purchase fund.

Please consider helping us in this endeavour, which will substantially progress the creation and protection of the Bellbird Corridor and the fragile life within – it needs and deserves our support.

Yours sincerely,

Robin Jolliffe (Chairperson)

Find out more about The Monteverde Conservation League in this short movie.

I was reading an article on the MCL website while looking for engaging projects to do at school with kids and teachers. I came across this article on making a massive quilt, with pictures of the rainforest on.

The idea is to raise awareness of the rainforest in the local area, even if its miles away from the forest.

Doing this would generate quite a bit of local media coverage for the schools involved and for local business if they sponsored a square. It also tells everyone that we can all do our bit to save the forests whether we are at school, run a local business or run a country! We can all make a difference.

I don’t think it needs to be a stitched quilt. It could be a technology project to get images and piece them together as an image on a website. It could be a science project to plant a patchwork quilt in the garden that looks like a map of the world! What ever it is, make it a big effort and get the local media interested!

Why not generate a local media campaign! If you need any help with it, give us a shout and we’ll help with media contacts.

When I was a kid (it’s a while ago now!) we built a mini rainforest in my science class which illustrated how the rainforest water cycle worked. This got me to thinking about doing the project again!

The basic idea is, grab a container (an old jar or maybe a small fish tank) and fill the bottom with an inch of sand/gravel. Over the top of that put an inch of soil and compost.

Grab a few plants African Violets seem a popular choice, but ferns are great as well. If you really want to be impressive, grab an orchid and stick that in there as well.

Carefully plant your ‘rainforest’ vegetation and give it a good old watering.

Now put something over the top of the fish tank or jar, cling film if its a small jar or a piece of cover glass if its a fish tank and put your new mini rainforest somewhere light. Make sure it isn’t in to much direct sunlight or the poor plants will cook in there!

Don’t forget to put a nice big rock in there for decoration

Now sit back and watch as your mini rainforest starts the cycle of taking up water from the soil through ‘transpiration’, using the nutrients they need along the way and then releasing the water back into the system through ‘evapotranspiration’ as the water evaporates into the air. The water droplets on the surface of the tank or jar are caused by the water in the air ‘condensing’ on the cold glass and then drop back down to the soil for the roots to take them back through the plant again.

This cycle is important for plant life, but it’s also important for sustaining the land. The process works like a huge filter (like the one that you might have had in the fish tank you are using now).

If you see a bit of mold appearing in the jar then lift the lid off and let some air in to circulate. You shouldn’t have to water your rainforest for 4 weeks or more!

If you have done this project before at school or at home, then we would love to hear from you and see pictures of your own mini rainforest. Just use the comments form below to tell us about it.

If you need some instant inspiration, check out these pictures on flickr! Thanks to Katie Mancine for the permission to use the terrarium image in this post.

So you may wonder how you can possibly do a project that can raise money to help save the rainforests of the world. You might be sat at school thinking, there must be something I could do? Some way we could help?

Well you are right, there are loads of ways to help the rainforest and THIS is one of them.

There is a lady called Sue Memhard (you can find out about her from her website). Sue has written a book about the rainforest, it’s called Dream The Forest Wild. The idea is, we can all download the book for nothing! And then once we have it in our grasp, we can then illustrate the book ourselves, in any way we wish.

Once you have done the illustrations, you can display your book in your school or community, and send your illustrations to the site, where they will post them for all to see! Here is an example.

To raise money for the Children’s Eternal Rainforest you can then have a book sale, a Dream The Forest Wild performance, a bake sale, etc.

Here is some info from the guys at Sues website…

A NEW CHILDREN’S STORY and a BOOK PROJECT to help the Children’s Eternal Rainforest
DREAM THE FOREST WILD – How Children Saved a Rainforest
by Sue Memhard with Jim Crisp (the forest’s founding Director)

This joyful, inspiring story for all ages of how the Children’s Eternal Rainforest was created is co-authored by the MCL Director who gave the forest its name.
The children’s Dream of 20 years ago to save a rainforest is still alive. Now, you can help keep the forest wild and safe for the next 20 years, and at the same time help your school.
READ THE STORY AND BE PART OF THE KIDS’ BOOK PROJECT to keep the dream alive

Here at Children’s Tropical Forest we’ve taken a step to making our website operation carbon neutral by teaming up with NS Design for the supply of our web hosting.

NS Design use data centres owned by Coreix the first UK data centre to become carbon neutral.

On March 26th, 2007 Coreix became the first UK based managed hosting services company to take the crucial step to make their operations more environmentally friendly. On behalf of all their clients Coreix is voluntarily offsetting all the CO2 emissions caused by its data centre and are the first UK data centre to do so. Coreix contributions have been used to help purchase the Rodas property, a 45 hectare extension to the Buenaventura Reserve managed by Fundación Jocotoco in the foothills of the Andes in south-western Ecuador.

But it isn’t just through the use of Coreix data centres that NSDesign are making their products greener, they also do work in the UK with Tree Appeal, a tree planting scheme. As NS Design explain…

As an ethical business we care about the environment, and recently became one of the few web service companies to become carbon neutral, by completely offsetting our carbon footprint.

Our partnership with Tree Appeal allows us to do even more – by pledging to plant a native broad leaf tree for every customer who purchases our new “Green Web Hosting Plan”. They’ll also get an official certificate (digital of course!) thanking them for their contribution, as well as links to specific environmental websites and carbon calculators.

Data centres have a huge environmental impact due to the massive amount of electricity they consume to power the servers and the climate control needed to keep everything cool.

As this article from Tech Republic illustrates..

Here’s one of the interesting things about all of these new data centers that are going up in rural areas — their energy consumption. For example, Microsoft’s new data center will consume 48 megawatts of power, or enough to power about 40,000 homes. According the US Census Bureau, for 2005 all of Grant County, Washington (which includes Quincy) contained only 30,605 housing units. That means that Microsoft’s new data center will consume about 30% more energy than all of the people in the entire county combined.

We can all do our bit and choosing our suppliers based on their environmental credentials is a good place to start.

For more information on carbon reduction, check out Zero Carbonista as well.

At CTF everyone involved works on a pro bono basis, not a single penny of donations is spent on administration overhead, everything goes to land purchase or other projects. It’s the same with many of the projects we raise money for, such as the GDFCF.

But is it for everyone? What makes someone or an organisation want to do pro bono work? Is it out of a sense of duty, or just a marketing gimick? Is it a sense of pride or a sense of shame that drives a person to leverage their professional skills for the common good?

We understand the success of our company requires the support of the communities and organisations in which we are members. As a successful marketing communications agency, Frameworks believes a great way to thank these communities is by sharing our wealth of experience and knowledge in the form of charitable Pro Bono work. {Frameworks Web Design Agency}

Well that’s how Frameworks, a web design agency, see it as an organisation and they have done some lovely work for the Rights and Humanity website.

But as an individual I am personally driven by many things. I enjoy web design, but I am neither trained nor have a talent for it, but I enjoy it. Hence my involvement in the redesign of this website. My inner geek also drives me to want to be involved with the site. My professional skills allow me to develop website strategy and execute on it, but it gives me a great sense of achievement.

The rainforest cause for me is something I feel very strongly in. To do nothing is simply not an option. It is so far removed from our daily lives in the UK and Europe that raising the profile here is vital to get people donating in any way they can. We are reliant on a resource thousands of miles away, a resource that we consume in a variety of ways either directly or indirectly. I feel compelled to do something to save it both at a local level here at home with recycling, energy efficiency and the rest of the good stuff we can all do, but to also act directly to help IN the rainforest in some way. This allows that.

I’ll be asking the other guys at CTF and some of our project owners to see what motivates them and of course, we’d love to hear your views.

If you can help with some time and energy then we’d love to hear from you.

Dan Janzen has sent us an image he has taken of a Male day-flying moth Xanthocastnia evalthe in the family Castniidae, about 2 inch wingspan.

The Sector A work is currently looking for funding to extend the forest North and protect this area of rainforest for ever.

CTF is running a campaign to raise funds for the GDFCF work. We plan to raise £50,000 to help purchase this incredibly diverse habitat. The importance of this habitat is underlined by Dans comment on the picture he sent to us.

I attach an image of a day-flying large moth that I took in May on a property 14a in Sector A. It is Xanthocastnia evalthe (Castniidae) and this is the first one I have ever seen alive.

GDFCF have identified the owners of the land and they have all agreed to sell, we need to raise the funds to get the down payments made. Property 14a that Dan mentions above is 55 hectares and requires approximately $150,000 to purchase. You can see it in the map below.

If you you would like to help, use the donation button at the top of this page.

Here at CTF we have a core of writers who are working with us to produce blogs from the areas we work with as well as articles from notible conservationists. However, we are always on the look out for interesting articles and view points from anyone and everyone.

Do you enjoy writing about conservation or the rainforest?

Are you planning a trip or adventure that you think our readers would find interesting?

Do you think we’re missing a trick and that there are burning issues that need to be addressed with regarding preservation and conseravtion of the tropical forests around the world?

If the answer to the questions above is Yes, then drop us a line using the Contact button at the top of the page.