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.

We recently received the following statement from The Monteverde Conservation League (the guys responsible for the Children’s Eternal Rainforest). We thought we ought to pass the message along.

I don’t know what we can do to help on this one, but I’ll do some digging and see if there is some way to lodge a simple protest. If anyone knows of a way, please add it to the comments at the bottom.

The Monteverde Conservation League (MCL) is a civil non-profit organization, and during the last twenty years has extensively promoted environmental education, conservation, and the sustainable use of natural resources. The MCL now presents the following public announcement about the important environmental theme “OPEN AIR METAL MINING”. This announcement takes into consideration that the community of Las Crucitas, San Carlos, in the northern zone of Costa Rica, has authorized the government to construct what would be an open air gold mine. This mine will be the largest open-air mine in Central America, and they have already began to deforest the little remaining tropical forest present in the region. This has consumed large and important reservoirs of biodiversity, where unique ecosystems composed of a large variety of wildlife can be found.

For this reason, the MCL must acknowledge that:

a. Open air mining is considered on a global level to be one of the most destructive activities in regard to the environment,
b. Gold extracted from the earth tends to be found in very small quantities, and to be successful in its extraction one must process a large amount of material. At least six tons of material (earth and other components) must be mined in order to obtain one gram of gold, and in addition almost 4.5kg of cyanide and other compound chemicals (very toxic substances) must be added to a mix of the mined material and water to separate and extract the gold, which obviously will remain in the environment.
c. The main consequences of mining related activities are: the destruction of the forest, land, and landscape; the utilization of large quantities of water (a small mine will consume in one hour what a family will use over twenty years); as well as the contamination of water, air, and soils with harmful chemicals that last for hundreds of years.
d. The generation of employment will be minimal, this based on the fact that modern technology used for mining requires qualified individuals; for these reasons the social impacts will be very negative considering the effects on health and safety.
e. The economy of our country has never been dependant upon mining activities, and few provide benefits.

And on those grounds, The Monteverde Conservation League, in carrying out its mission, establishes and states:

• a NO ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DESTRUCTIVE ACTIVITIES, IN DIRECT HARM OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND COMMUNITIES.
• a NO ON THE OPEN AIR MINING OF METALS in Crucitas of San Carlos, Northern Zone, or in any other region of Costa Rica.

Also, we support and unite the other organizations that promote and perform the conservation of natural resources, as well as fight against the attempts to harm these resources, such as mining.

Finally we request and insist that the government authorities establish professional consultation in regard to environmental impact, and integrate the accumulative and synergetic impacts of the region into the environmental impact studies in order that their decisions do not go against natural resources or future community development.

We asked Dan Janzen, President of the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund, how they identify the people who currently own the rainforest that they purchase for conservation. See what he has to say.

The land purchases (more than 300 in the history of the formation of ACG, and see the GDFCF site for the specific example of Rincon Rainforest) are extremely varied in their nature and ownerships. The owners range from original frontier colonists to middle-class absentee landlords to wealthy corporations to foreign investors, and about every imaginable combination and in-between. They all have one trait – they are happy to sell their land for something approximating market value in order to buy something ‘better’ – land, store, delivery truck, investment bonds, vacation in Europe, relative support, and about everything else you can think of. This move “up” is their personal evaluation of their situation.

Another variable that has been important has been the occasional case, usually with long-time resident families, of “I am happy to sell it for inclusion in a national park” (with the silent implication of I would not sell it to a developer or THAT neighbor).

The actual process of land purchase is sociologically complex, but boils down to what any neighbor does if he wants to buy the neighbors farm. You talk, think, discuss, offer, counteroffer, etc. for weeks to months to years, and in the end, it is commonplace for the fund transfer to be in portions (because ACG and GDFCF does not have enough donor funds to buy the entire property outright) and to allow 6 months to a year for removal of livestock resident on parts of the property.

Almost always we purchase an entire property, because the person has long since moved off the land and simply wishes to cash in and use the funds elsewhere. All properties purchased are surveyed (for area and location), titled, and registered in the national land register, and owned by the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund (a US and Costa Rican registered charity) until passed as a “finished” ACG Sector to the government (in the meantime they are managed jointly by GDFCF and ACG).

As for what appear to be high land prices, one has to remember that Costa Rica, for all its low financial resources, very much approximates a developed country in terms of goods, services, health, education, government stability, and land ownership. Ask yourself what a hectare of old growth forest on private land a two hour drive from an international airport in UK or California would cost, and then the Sector A land prices are bargain basement (and climbing yet more rapidly as agro-industry becomes the major competitor and yet another road is paved).

But with this greater cost also comes enormously greater social stability for the purchase and its permanent incorporation into national park status. In those countries where tropical forest can still be purchased for a quarter to half the cost of Sector A lands, the management and stress costs, both in dollars and sweat equity, will have to yet be paid over the years to come. In Costa Rica they have already been paid.

So how do people come to own large tracts of rainforest?

If the owner is international, they bought it from a Costa Rican, almost invariably. The Costa Rican who owns it today bought it from someone else, and all the land around here (Rincon Forest) is owned by a historical chain containing 5-10 owners back to colonial times. ACG contains the second oldest European ranch in Costa Rica, established about 1580. Think on that date. There have been 40+ owners for Santa Rosa since then. The specific Sector A area was initially a few huge land holdings obtained by colonists in the 1800′s and early 1900′s as part of government programs for rural development, and these have gradually been fractured and sold off in parcels as they were also (often) logged or otherwise converted to agroscape, where they are now. The indigenous holdings here vaporized with the first several hundred years of European occupation.

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.

This video is an info-mercial for Global Vision International, they run expeditions all over the world, some of which hit the rainforests that we raise money for. Check out their site for scientific trips into the rainforest.

42,000 acres of beautiful cloud forest in Costa Rica. It is managed by the Monteverde Conservation League with money raised by children and their supporters all over the world, and is home to a huge range of plants, animals, insects and birds.