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CHILDREN'S TROPICAL FORESTS NEWS
Volume 4 January 1999
Editor: Roger Littlewood
A GIANT RAINFOREST STEPPING STONE ACROSS THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE
(Robin Jolliffe, 9th November 1998, Children' s Tropical Forests UK)
"The Bridge Project"
Dear Robin and the rest of you,
On behalf of 1035
viruses, bacteria, mites,
insects, mushrooms, trees, birds and
porcupines, I want to personally thank you for
your further gift of $3,360 to the Guanacaste
Dry Forest Conservation Fund. All of your gift
is being used for direct purchase of rainforest
on the eastern margin of the Area de
Conservacion Guanacasta (ACG) in north
western Costa Rica.
This purchase achieves the final and full
connection of Guanacasta National Park on the
Pacific Coast and Rincon de la Vieja National
Park on the wet eastern slope of the
Continental Divide. It consolidates this
conservation area into one continuous unit of
88,000 terrestrial hectares (217,360 acres) and
43,000 hectares (106,210 acres) of Pacific
marine habitat.
The final objective is a payment of $150,000
for this vital 'Bridge' at the end of January
1999.
Your support of this project is deeply
appreciated. Only this way, will there be any
significant tropical biodiversity remaining as
we move through the 21st Century.
Daniel H Janzen, Professor of Biology,
University of Pennsylvania.
(Robin Jolliffe to Dan Janzen 7 December)
Have you now enough funding to complete the
purchase in January 1999?
(Dan Janzen to Robin Jolliffe 8 December)
We all did it! In the second week of November,
the W. Alton Jones Foundation very graciously
made a $150,000 grant to the Guanacaste Dry
Forest Conservation Fund, concluding their
support for the establishment of the Area de
Conservation Guanacaste that they began in
1986. This grant completes the fund-raising
effort for the last property to complete the
'Bridge'.
(Robin Jolliffe to Dan Janzen 8th December)
Do you need further funding for extension of
the 'Bridge' even though you have completed
the main part?
(Dan Janzen to Robin Jolliffe 8th December)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
The ACG has on its borders the Rincon
Rainforest and a few other much smaller old-growth
patches, and then it has a lot of land
that could be very easily restored to forest as
well. This means that as long as you have the
energy to keep the dollars flowing, I can
guarantee that they will go into conserving
more forest. And the more forest, the more
secure is the entire package.
MONTEVERDE CLOUD FOREST, COSTA RICA
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN'S RAINFOREST - FASCINATING
INSIGHTS INTO
THE WORKINGS OF A WORLD
CLASS RESERVE
Pioneering schemes to pay protectors of forest
for the environmental benefits they provide;
complex land disputes; shaping the
conservation laws of the future; experimental
reforestation; research into the life styles of
exotic endangered species; creating Children's
Nature Centres; and helping elderly people to
celebrate the Christmas Festival.
It's all in a day's work according to the 33-page
Annual Report sent to us recently by the
Monteverde Conservation League, which owns
and manages the First International Children's
Rainforest in the cloud shrouded highlands of
central Costa Rica.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the Report
is its consistent references to schemes whereby
forest protectors - be they conservation
organisations, farmers or private owners - will,
or soon could be, paid for their environmental
services to the community at large. Already,
the Monteverde Conservation League is
beginning to receive substantial payments from
the Costa Rican Government under the Forest
Protection Certificate scheme. But perhaps
even more significant, the MCL has also
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Under the new Costa Rican Forestry Law,
the Monteverde Conservation League has
recently received 2,850,000 Colones (£6,900)
from Forest Protection Certificates issued
by the Ministry of Environment and Energy.
Government funding comes from a variety
of sources, such as a selective tax on fuel and
other hydrocarbons.
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helped a number of landowners living on the
periphery of the Monteverde Cloud Forest to
benefit from the scheme. The list reads a little
like the Domesday Book: Alexis Torres of San
Gerardo received payments in respect of 100
hectares of forest; Gilbert Jimenez of
Cebadona for 5 hectares; Mariano Arguedas of
Los Llanos for 45 hectares; and so on.
These types of incentives diminish the pressure
on farmers to destroy part of their forests and
also diminish the importance of land purchase
by conservation bodies as the only mechanism
of forest protection.
The MCL is also negotiating to receive
payments for protecting the 2,700 hectare
Esperanza River Watershed. The owner of the
hydro-electric project which depends on
Esperanza for its water power is willing, in
principle, to pay for these environmental
services. MCL is also hoping that the Costa
Rican Electricity Institute will recognise the
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The possibility that the Monteverde
Conservation League, which manages and
protects the First International Children's
Rainforest, will be paid by public and
private utilities for the Forest's role in
protecting the Esperanza River Watershed
is moving towards a reality.
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strategic environmental services that the First
International Children's Rainforest provides
for the whole of Costa Rica, since the
conservation and protection of this forest
guarantees the water production for Lake
Arenal. Lake Arenal's hydro plant generates
half the electricity used in Costa Rica!
But like every large undertaking, the
Monteverde Conservation League faces many
problems too. Aside from the constant funding
challenges which confront all conservation
bodies, large and small, this huge Children's
Rainforest is currently the subject of 28
different land disputes, affecting an area of
2,000 hectares of the Reserve. Some of them
are of extraordinary complexity, including
tracts of forest where several different people
have legally registered the land in their own
names. The resolution of these disputes -expensive,
of course, as is any legal dispute - is
high on the priority list of many members of
the MCL's Ruling Committee.
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The MCL has trained two women's groups
in La Tigra ("Los Cerritos" and "La
Lucha") in tree production. In 1997, these
private nurseries produced more than
40,000 trees which were sold to the Costa
Rican Institute of Electricity, which will use
them for reforestation).
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With enormous support from the International
Children's Rainforest Network Worldwide, the
protected forest at Monteverde grew very
rapidly in the late Eighties and early Nineties.
This rapid expansion has itself brought its
attendant problems now.
Only 13% of the 23,000 hectares (57,000
acres) of land acquired by the MCL is properly
registered under Costa Rican law. And
although opinion differs as to just how
significant this registration process is to the
actual ownership of the land, proper
registration of the remaining 87% is another
time consuming administrative priority.
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At the First Latin American Congress on
National Parks and other protected areas
held in Colombia recently, we gave a
presentation about private reserves in Costa
Rica.
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Meanwhile, conservation work too must go on.
One key project, funded by the British
Embassy in Costa Rica, is to study the mating
and dietary habits of Monteverde's avian
megastars - the Bare-necked Umbrellabird, the
Resplendent Quetzal, the Three-Wattled
Bellbird and the Black Guan. Census research
determines variations in the species abundance
in different habitats, invaluable in establishing
priorities for the conservation of these
endangered species.
And then, dotted around on both the Atlantic
and Pacific slopes of the Reserve, there are 97
experimental reforestation plots in
regenerating areas of the forest - planted so
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We were invited by the Bishop of San Carlos
and the Priest of La Tigra to talk about
environmental themes.
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that different reforestation methods can be
studied. The growth and survival rates of the
planted species in each plot must be measured
and compared periodically.
It is plain from this fascinating Annual Report
that the business of creating and protecting a
huge Reserve like the First International
Children's Rainforest is a complex, difficult
and exciting undertaking. And one of the
critical decisions that the International
Children's Rainforest Network has taken
recently is that it must provide on-going
support to the Reserve, even though the major
land acquisition phase is over.
Over the last 10 years, a magnificent wildlife
Reserve has been created by skill, courage and
dedication. If it is to survive for another
hundred years and beyond, those qualities - and
the financial resources to underpin them - will
be required in greater measure still.
ECUADOR
JATUN SACHA ROAD PLAN DROPPED AS PURCHASE OF CORRIDOR PROGRESSES
It isn't often that you have the best of both
worlds in rainforest conservation, but the Jatun
Sacha Foundation seems to have contrived just
that!
In the January 1998 issue of Children's
Tropical Forests News, we reported the
planned construction of a road which would
carve through the Jatun Sacha Biological
Station, the primary rainforest reserve in
Amazonian Ecuador which CTF UK has been
supporting for the last three years.
We launched an appeal to help purchase the
entire corridor of rainforest fringing the new
road so that Jatun Sacha, which comprises two
separated blocks of forest, could be united into
a single large forest reserve. Albeit dissected
by the new road.
We reported the success of the Appeal in June
1998 by which time the purchase of the forest
corridor had already begun.
But then, on 6th October 1998, we received an
E-Mail message from Michael McColm, the
Vice President of the Jatun Sacha Foundation,
reporting the success of a 'political action',
organised by the Foundation 'where we got the
Prefecto and the oil companies to agree to
construct the road elsewhere, something which
was quite difficult and something I am quite
proud of!'
In the same message, he reported that with the
recent donations raised by CTF in Britain,
Germany, Sweden and the United States 'we
were able to purchase about 165 hectares (400
acres) of forested property along the corridor.'
So the consolidation of the Reserve into a
major block of contiguous forest has received a
substantial boost, whilst the threat to its
integrity from the road project has disappeared.
CTF AT LONDON AQUARIUM'S "RAINFOREST WEEK"
Children's Tropical Forests UK was one of four
rainforest charities invited to exhibit at the
London Aquarium's recent "Rainforest
Awareness Week" (Nov 22nd - 29th).
Sponsored by Ben and Jerry's Icecream and the
Rainforest Cafˇ, all proceeds from the sale of
ice cream during the week have been
generously donated equally to CTF UK;
Rainforest Concern; Survival International;
and the Orang-utan Foundation.
CTF Trustee, Sean Newell, who was largely
responsible for designing the new display
boards at the Exhibition, said:
'It was a really great opportunity to tell people
about our work and to raise awareness about
the importance of rainforests'.
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