Ecotourism: Costa Rica Tortuguera National Park

Flying towards Tortuguera, one of the largest wildlife and tropical rainforest preserves in the world, you can see some of the sandy beaches that are very popular with tourists but we will be spending most of our time going up the river and into the jungle.  The Figure 12.17 picture you see is one from a textbook I sometimes use and I thought it was a pretty sad picture that barely demonstrated the real range of biodiversity of plants and animals in the preserve. 


There is a small village where we jump on our boat.  The tour itself advertises itself as "ecotourism" which is tourism that tried to be sustainable and have the least amount of negative effects on the environment and people who live in the areas you are visiting.  As you know, the tropics gets a ton of rainfall and thus the soils are often of poor quality because minerals are washed off and you can see how thick the water is with sediment.  Also, check out how much those tree roots hold the shoreline in place.  Often when there is deforestation you can have large areas washed out and homes and productive agricultural land destroyed.


One of the dilemmas of development is places want to have things like electricity which needs infrastructure to go through.  Unfortunately the areas you need to cut for things like powerlines allow for invasive species from other ecosystems to come in and disrupt the native plants and animals.  An example can be see here of bamboo which was brought in during colonialism because it is quick growing and a good sturdy wood for building things but because it grows so rapidly it overtakes lots of natural areas.  Often there will be laws against cutting down trees as they want to preserve what few there are still but they will encourage the cutting down of something like bamboo which you probably know, comes from the entire other side of the planet so it is very much invasive.




Along the shoreline you can see some areas are washing out, especially if they have had trees cut or died and thus their roots rot and are unable to hold the ground in.  This is where we launch from the boat, you can see some animals in the tree tops already.










Technically a jungle is defined as the thick area of vegetation right next to the river there as the only place that the sun goes all of the way to the ground is next to a waterway.  When you are in the forest itself the canopy can be so thick and not much suns gets to the actual ground so it can be a little bare.




In figure 12.10 above you can see how indigenous populations could utilize how the trees can contain those soils for farming, the root systems you see in these pictures make a nice lattice. 


Keep in mind I am in no way a professional photographer so I was not able to get the full range of plans and animals in pictures but these are still all pretty cute (see the alligator in the grass above?).  You can see as we went downstream we came across some locals and you can tell it is the dry season because the water level is quite a bit down from the heights of the stilts under the house.  These kinds of stilts holding up the houses above the water level are pretty common in this region, especially along the river.  You can also see lots of houses that are actually floating on the river which is even better at managing the ups and downs of the water levels.

Ecotourism in the Caribbean: Examples from Curu in Costa Rica

Many nations around the world are turning to tourism as a growth and development strategy.  Some have decided to try to encourage ecotourism as a way to take advantage of their beautiful natural environments in a more sustainable way.  Sometimes this includes livable wages for local workers and small business owners, but sometimes they can be mismanaged or merely use "eco" as a marketing term with little actual environmental protection or local improvements in incomes and living conditions.



CURU is a very popular tourist destination in Costa Rica and they have made great efforts towards cleaning up and maintaining their environments.  First I will show you a monkey sanctuary.  This was an area that had been farmed but through time the younger generation moved to the city for work and there was only one final family member who remained.  They offered up the land as a monkey sanctuary.  This is one of the original homes they lived in.





A couple things to note about the rain forest here and rain forests in general.  Because of the heavy amounts of precipitation the soils are often low in nutrients which leach out, the rains literally wash nutrients away.  Sometimes it's only the thick covering of leaves that plants can use for nutrients and as you can see the root systems often hold the landscapes together.  That is one of the reasons deforestation can lead to soil loss and even landslides.



As you can see, the quality of things like signage is mixed.  Many of these areas that are now grassy were full rain forests before the large scale deforestation during and after colonialism.  This one like others was switched to agricultural for a time but the soils were not able to sustain agriculture in a long term due to poor soils.  Many of the tropical areas of the world are now more like a grassland after they tried farming for a while.  Would the forest come back if they were not used as grazing land?  
  

This was the dry season so you can see the water level of the stream is very low which allows you to again see how intricate the tree root system is in keeping the land from washing out.  A dry season here can mean months of zero rain.  You can also see some of the old growth larger trees here and there as we walk towards the preserve.



Above, she is pointing to what is sometimes called a "sensitive plant" that closes when you touch it. As I mentioned, this is a monkey sanctuary area and any injured monkey from outside the sanctuary can be brought in to this sanctuary to save it.  It is put in this fenced area as it heals before it can be introduced to the larger population.

You can see the monkey recovering.  There is also a goat and the purpose of the goat is to keep the grass short in the enclosure but since the monkey feeds the goat it's bananas (you can see it doing that in the above pics) the goat does not keep the grass low outside of the path from the monkey to the door in the fence.



As we walk further out into the forest we see more wildlife.  You can see a termite mound here, they are edible and taste a bit like mint.  A fair source of protein in a pinch, which is also how you capture them.  You put your finger on their mound and they will swarm it and then you just gulp it down off of your finger.  Of course, you could also go after something like the deer you see in this above photo if that is more to your protein tastes. Now we will get to the primary tourist gathering place for our tour.





You can see several students here filling out some evaluations as this establishment is under review for ecotourism funding from the national government.  You can also see some of the recycling that has become common in the area.  Many other tourist places around the world will have giant piles of garbage which obviously is not a sustainable form of tourism for any ecosystem.  They have made great strides towards recycling and keeping natural areas clean over the 20 years I have been traveling here.






Not sure if you can make it out, but you might see bananas placed on the fence to the door of his structure above.  This is where the elderly woman lives whose family owned this land before she decided to turn it over into a monkey sanctuary.  Nobody else is allowed to feed the monkeys as you can see from the signs, except for her.  That was a condition of the deal she made with the government to hand the land over to them.  Monkeys are of course quite common all over Costa Rica, you can see them going around in packs and eating from various trees as they go kind of as common as squirrels are in Minnesota but of course there are also tropical squirrels there. You can see one in a photo below trying to avoid the spikes you see on many tropical trees.



I would say this is a pretty good example of ecotourism success.  As you can see form the pictures, they have all of the normal things that you might expect on a tour.  It is also local run unlike many other tourist traps where the resort owners make all of the money and supplies are shipped in so locals don't supply much and thus don't make much money.  They have plenty of picture opportunities, scuba and snorkel, there is a nearby beach and wildlife to see.  This is not as famous as Tortuguera or Monte Verde and it's preserve is not as large but I will post those in a separate post. 

I will make a couple more posts on Costa Rica including more wildlife and eco and regular tourism so stay tuned.