TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/010289/01028900.040

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 3KB | 47 lines

PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 35

The Good News: Costa Rica Guards Its Forests


    When a fungal disease began ravaging Levy Bryant's four-hectare
cacao farm a decade ago, the landowner could have done what other
besieged farmers have done. He might easily have picked up an ax
and begun cutting down more tropical rain forest around his land
on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. He could have sold the timber from
the tall laurel trees that shade the cacao bushes, then burned the
dense virgin forest on the hill behind his farm. Then Bryant, like
so many financially strapped small farmers in Latin America, could
have sown pasture and sold the land to a cattle rancher. Within
three or four years, one more small piece of the tropics would have
vanished.

    That Bryant did not rush headlong down this slippery ecological
slope is in part testimony to Costa Rica's commitment to its
dwindling natural resources. The country has more than 20 national
parks, wildlife preserves and other protected areas covering 2,577
sq. mi., or 13% of the land. Moreover, the nation's stable
democracy has attracted hundreds of scientists and ecologists,
making Costa Rica a laboratory for finding out what is possible in
terms of sustainable development in the tropics.

    One of the major reasons Bryant's plantation is not a
fast-eroding cow pasture is that he got help from an environmental
group called Anai (which means "friend" in the language of the
local Bribri Indians). "We probably wouldn't still be farming if
it wasn't for these guys," admits Bryant. Anai provided him with
new kinds of crops, including vanilla plants and a different
variety of cacao tree, which is less likely to die from fungus.
Over the past five years, Anai has brought dozens of new varieties
of cash crops to more than 20 communities in the Talamanca region,
set up plant nurseries serving 1,500 people, and helped establish
a 10,000-hectare wildlife refuge.

    The encroachment of cow pastures on the cloud forest at
Monteverde spurred another of Costa Rica's efforts to save its
natural heritage. In 1972, 350 hectares of land owned by American
Quakers who had settled the region in the 1950s were set aside as
a private reserve. Over the years that has grown to 10,500
hectares. One key to preserving this huge area was to allow local
people to develop a tourist business. In five years the annual
number of visitors has gone from 6,000 to 15,000, and could climb
to more than 30,000 when a new road up from the plain is built.
That success shows that forests can produce income without being
destroyed.