guanacaste costa rica

The Guanacaste idea - guanacaste costa rica
American Forests, Nov-Dec, 1994 by David Tenenbaum

Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again with Furl.net. It's free! Save it.The stakes are high and time is short as scientists try to create a living, working, profitable ecosystem in what is being called the largest restoration project ever attempteed in the tropics.

ON A TORRID PLATEAU between a string of volcanoes and the Pacific Ocean, Julio Diaz kneels, brushes aside some leaves and grass, and spills water from a canteen. Instantly, dozens of minute brown seeds begin writhing, propelled by a corkscrewing motion of their beards. As Diaz stands, he explains that these seeds of "jaragua" grass are pushing themselves into the ground for protection against the parching tropical sun.

Jaragua is a popular pasture grass that has adapted perfectly to the seasonally dry climate here in Guanacaste Province. With a great deal of help from range fires, jaragua is crowding out the few remaining scraps of dry tropical forest in northwestern Costa Rica.

And that makes this aggressive grass public enemy No. 1, as far as Diaz, the fire-crew chief at the Guanacaste Conservation Area, is concerned.

Five centuries ago, a magnificent dense forest covered more than 200,000 square miles of Pacific coastal lowlands from Panama to Central Mexico. Today, after centuries of timber cutting, farming, and ranching, only about one one-thousandth of that area is still recognizable, and only a few hundred square miles are in preserves.