ASEPALECO
Maconer Carranza, who has lived on the
Nicoya Peninsula, on Costa Rica's Pacific Coast, for about
30 years, recalls community life before the arrival of a
now-thriving conservation group. "The difference is
like night and day," he says. "Before on the peninsula
we had droughts, fires, and indiscriminate logging. Now
that's all changed."
Illustration by Allan Núñez ("Nano")
The group he credits with the change is the Ecological Association
of Paquera, Lepanto and Cóbano (ASEPALECO), named
for three main towns on the peninsula. While ASEPALECO has
improved quality of life for Carranza and his neighbors,
the group is also part of an expansive and complex conservation
initiative that stretches from southern Mexico to Panama.
Called the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, the project
involves conservation groups, community organizations, government
agencies in each country, and international donor agencies,
which already have invested millions of dollars in corridor
activities.
According to Luis Rojas, technical liaison
between the corridor in Costa Rica and headquarters in Nicaragua,
the initiative had its origins in the early 1990s, when
biologists with the U.S.-based group Wildlife Conservation
Society designed and managed a project in Central America
called "Paseo Pantera," with support from the
U.S. Agency for International Development. The idea was
to link greenways along the Caribbean coast, so that a panther,
an endangered species that needs vast areas of undisturbed
habitat to survive, might roam from Guatemala south to Panama
without ever having to leave the protection of the rainforest.
The concept grew, Rojas says, to encompass southern Mexico
as well as wildlands extending from the Caribbean to the
Pacific throughout the isthmus. Today the Mesoamerican Biological
Corridor is managed by the Central American Commission on
the Environment and Development and is funded by the Global
Environment Facility, a fund managed by the United Nations
and the World Bank, and GTZ, a German international aid
agency.
Scientists emphasize that unless protected
areas are connected with one another via what they call
biological corridors, plants and wildlife that cannot venture
into open, developed areas -- such as cattle pastures, towns,
highways, or shopping malls -- will be trapped in isolated,
forested islands, unable to adequately exchange genes needed
to maintain healthy populations over the longterm.
Rojas recalls that the notion of what comprised
the ideal biological corridor changed when biologists and
policymakers began to consider which areas should be linked
and how. "It was recognized that many of these areas
had populations, including farmers, indigenous people, or
whole communities," he says. "So we had to look
for ways to offer options to them. The corridor can not
only be about preservation."
Now, in addition to protecting forests,
he says, corridor activities focus on converting residents'
environmentally damaging activities to more sustainable
practices and also rewarding people who keep the forests
they own intact, by finding ways they can charge for the
services these forests provide. For example, since forests
protect watersheds that supply nearby communities with continual
sources of drinking water, the residents who depend on the
potable water should compensate the forest owners for this
life-saving benefit.
Decades ago, farmers, ranchers, and loggers
burned or cut down most of the forests that once covered
Costa Rica's Nicoya peninsula, so the remaining pieces of
forests are particularly precious. Rojas and his colleagues
hope to establish a corridor that connects 2898-acre [1172-hectare]
Cabo Blanco Absolute Natural Reserve at the southernmost
tip of the peninsula with 5568-acre [2295-hectare] Barra
Honda National Park, 55 miles to the north. In an ecological
version of connect-the-dots, the corridor would snake up
the peninsula, incorporating smaller protected areas along
the way.
One of the refuges lying in the Corridor's
premeditated path is Karen Mogensen Wildlife Refuge, managed
by ASEPALECO. The grassroots group used funds bequeathed
by Mogensen, a longtime Nicoya Peninsula resident and conservationist,
to purchase the 1556-acre forested reserve, a watershed
that provides drinking water to thousands of peninsula residents.
The group is also promoting the kind of change in attitude
and sustainable activities that the Mesoamerican Biological
Corridor's grand strategy requires.
"I've worked for various organizations,
and what I admire about ASEPALECO is that our environmental
education program involves more than just speeches -- we
look for solutions," says director and biologist María
Teresa Cerdas.
For example, when population growth caused
serious trash problems, ASEPALECO didn't wait for a government
solution, but raised funds from the Netherlands, the Global
Environment Facility-Small Grants Program, and local institutions
to build a recycling center and launch a widespread recycling
education campaign. Other ASEPALECO Corridor-friendly activities
include building an environmental education center and a
small eco-lodge for tourists who want to hike through the
Karen Mogensen Wildlife Refuge, establishing mini-nature
reserves near 35 schools, helping residents plant organic
gardens, and starting tree nurseries for reforestation projects.
ASEPALECO also works with students at a local technical
highschool to monitor wildlife that was trapped when a new
road cut through their habitat. Students built a bridge
over the road to provide safe passage for such arboreal
mammals as monkeys and squirrels.
Maconer Carranza, who volunteers for ASEPELCO,
notes that a particularly successful project focused on
the training and organization of some 120 fire-prevention
volunteers, gathered in 10 community brigades. "The
change has been incredible," Cerda agrees. An effective
awareness campaign has helped reduce the number of fires
in the region, she says, adding that the group has also
used environmental education to popularize the concept of
biological corridors. "The idea was always something
very technical, involving institutions and researchers,
but we want the corridor to be an idea that comes from residents,"
she explains. Now ASEPELCO volunteers understand that their
efforts help not just the local environment, but also contribute
to a multi-national conservation vision.
Groups like ASEPELCO, that can bring together
local residents and municipalities, are vital to the corridor's
future, Rojas acknowledges. "The group's goals to organize
land use and manage biodiversity...are really innovative,"
he says, "and very much oriented to the objectives
of the corridor."
Rojas wants to encourage a "corridor
culture," so one day communities throughout the region
will want to protect the greenways in their backyards and
truly value the biodiversity protected within them.
