With the flourish of a pen, Costa Rica recently took a critical step in sustainable development and saving marine biodiversity, creating a huge Costa Rica conservation area of 1,000,000 hectares around one of the most renowned of all Costa Rica national parks.
It was a “day of national pride” for Costa Rica and a big deal for the globe.
Cocos Island, lying halfway between Costa Rica’s Pacific coast and the Galapagos Islands , has always been the crown jewel of Costa Rica parks. That island sits atop an underwater mountain range (called a seamount), so blinding, so superb, so filled with marine animals that it impressed the famous sea captain, Jacque Cousteau, to declare it “the most beautiful island in the world.”
Though you may not have heard its name, you’ve seen it or been there in your imagination. It’s the tropical island everyone knows as Jurassic Park and is said to be the setting of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s famous Treasure Island.
Its waters are so renowned for its many sharks that it’s often simply called Shark Island. For several decades, scuba divers , conservationists , scientists , and film crews have visited its waters.
Long known as a tropical paradise, Costa Rica is an enormously popular tourist destination but few visitors know that this small country,making up only about 1/10,000 of the planet’s surface area, has led the way towards sustainable development.
Virtually 1/4 of it is set aside for national parks and preserves.
Over the past 20 years or so, it has re-planted and reclaimed about 25% of its forests and is on track to being the first carbon neutral country within the next ten years.
It’s also the first country to have its president declare that it wants to end man’s endless war with nature and make peace with it.
“Costa Rica is a small country, but it can be a great leader. Nearly sixty years ago, we became the first nation in the world to abolish our army. Today [2008], we seek to make history once again by becoming the first country in the world to protect its national wonders, on land and under the sea, in perpetuity.” —-Former Costa Rica President Oscar Arias
That vision, that commitment, that governance, is carried on by President Laura Chinchilla, who presided over the creation of the superb Seamounts Marine Management Area in March 2011, massively expanding the protected waters and seamounts around Cocos Island to nearly 4,000 square miles.
Critical habitat to many species, including highly endangered scalloped sharks and leatherback sea turtles so ancient that they were already ancient when the first dinosaur appeared on earth, is now saved into perpetuity. Industrial trawlers that are decimating our seas and marine ecosystems will not decimate this marine ecosystem. Marine animals and an ecosystem that took millenia to form will continue to flourish.
140 years ago, President Ulysses S. Grant announced the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, conserving an entire terrestrial ecosystem from rapacious opportunists.
Good governance, Mr. President.
Seamounts Marine Management Area is far larger than Yellowstone and preserves an entire undersea ecological system. A well merited “day of national pride for Costa Rica.”
Good governance, Mme. President.
Isn’t it time to get away from that little uninteresting cubicle and take that long need Costa Rica vacation?It’s only the size of tiny West Virginia, but our Central American neighbour to the south hosts almost 5% of all the plant and animal species in the world including “the most beautiful island” in the world, impressive Cocos Island.