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I recently had the pleasure to immerse myself in some of Costa Rica's natural areas. I had greatly anticipated this trip, having lived in Nicaragua for 10 years, having coordinated visits to its natural sites as a guide, most recently working in the conservation and management of one of Nicaragua's key wildlife refuges, the Refugio de Vida Silvestre La Flor. This is one of three protected sea turtle nesting beaches in the country.
My intention was to look at Costa Rican parks and protected areas with the idea of introducing the same management in Nicaragua. With a group of biology students in tow, we embarked on our eye-opening excursion.
Tour operators in the area now actively avoid the park, not because of the $6 per person entry fees, but because private areas are better managed and more interesting than the park itself.
My first stop was the town of Tortuguero and the Natural History Museum run by CCC (Caribbean Conservation Council). The museum is small and very nicely done with a $1 entrance fee. The exhibits include a video on the history of the area focusing on Archie Carr, the marine turtle guru. The museum's staff were well informed and helpful.
While we were there they mentioned that there had been nesting activity on the beach behind the museum the night before our visit. I went -- students in tow, to check this out. The students immediately commented about the piles of garbage and general filth in town and around the area. The beach was also decidedly filthy.
As a seasoned Central American traveler, this came as no surprise to myself. It was no better or worse than many other Caribbean coastal towns. Indeed, there were three nests from the previous night, except all were empty with shafts excavated to where the eggs had been.
I went back to the museum and asked if they moved the eggs to safety or for some other purpose. The answer was that the nests had been pillaged during the night -- not an uncommon problem at La Flor. However, this poaching occurred literally under the nose of the museum.
The park entrance is at the far end of town from the museum. We were told there is a trail to the protected beach that takes two hours to walk. In addition to the park entrance fee, a guide must be hired to accompany us -- a fairly reasonable requirement. The hotel boat driver went off in search of a guide from town, came back 20 minutes later assuring us that he had one who was a very knowledgeable ingeniero implying he had a university degree.
This person showed up 10 minutes later and asked if we were in a hurry, stating he "would be ready in an hour". I explained that we had already been waiting more than a half an hour, so he reluctantly agreed to start immediately. We agreed to his asking fee for the group, and off we went.
According to our guide, the first part of the hike was supposedly through primary forest, except the first tree he pointed to was a coco plant as were virtually all the tress in the area -- the "primary forest" was a coco plantation that had been fallow for a few years!
We continued on over what amounted to a mud wallow of a trail the width of a narrow road, heavily churned by ATV (all terrain vehicle) tracks and ever-widened by attempts to stay out of the deepest mud.
A bit further along the guide stopped again and pointed to a ginger plant proclaiming it to be a cactus. When my students corrected him, he mumbled something and proceeded on to the next plant which had the remains of an interpretative sign.
The sign was gone, and our guide pronounced this to be a balsa tree -- wrong again. At the third missing sign, he asked us if we knew what it was, so we identified it as a stand of heliconius. He was impressed and remained mostly silent for the remainder of the walk. After a half hour through secondary forest, we reached the beach where we were greeted by more ATV tracks than turtle tracks. All the nests we observed had the tell-tale signs of pillaging.
Our guide then led us back to the park entrance. The entire tour took an hour and fifteen minutes during which the we had seen nothing of interest except for a male violaceous trogon which a student spotted. We had to stop and pull the guide back to keep him from scaring it.
Back at park headquarters, the guide offered his "services" if we wanted to view turtles at night. We declined. I then asked about all the ATV tracks on the beach and was told that it was the most convenient way for the rangers to "patrol" and supply the second guard unit at the far end of the park.
On seeing a small fleet of boats belonging to the park, I asked why they were not used. The resposne was something to the effect that the park's $220,000 per year budget did not pay for upkeep on the boats and they had fallen into disrepair. To finalize this part of our trip, I then proceeded to the visitor toilet which lacked lid, toilet paper, and door, and was flanked by an open garbage pit. I decided I could wait until I got back to the hotel.
I discussed the situation with the hotel owner and our boatman. The boatman responded that while he had been waiting for our group to return, he had been offered turtle eggs for sale.
The hotel owner said that he did not recommend the night-time turtle tour either, which is even more of a rip-off than the daytime one. Rather, that we should go out in front of the private beach at the hotel if we wanted to see turtles. He was absolutely correct. The hotel beach (about two kilometers south of the park) was an order of magnitude cleaner (albeit still far from pristine), a leatherback came out the first night right in front of the hotel, and neither it nor another green turtle nest just down the beach were removed by poachers. I was glad we had followed the hotel owner's advice. Other people there had advised us of other unsavory goings on in town/park especially at night, such as being offered drugs for sale.
We decided to do a bit of exploring in the local waterways, which are very nice if a bit congested with tour boats during the day. At night we took a trip to see caiman and crocodile, of which we saw only a few small specimens. We were told that most of the larger crocodilidae had been taken by poachers, and that if we wanted to see larger ones we had to go far upriver.
The morning after our visit to the national park, we visited a nearby private reserve called Canos Palmas. This reserve is run by a group of Canadian volunteers on a shoestring budget. They have a small but decent network of trails. The Canadians proved to be very knowledgeable about the local wildlife and we were very well received. My only regret was having spent $70 on the park and not having much left to donate to Canos Palmas.
Across the river from this private reserve is the "cerro" or hill (not part of the park system), which boasts lots of trails and a spectacular view from the top. The mornings here tend to be very busy with tour operators tripping over one another, moving along accordion-like while looking at the rainforest fauna and flora.
In truth, the forest here is much better than inside the park, trails much better, and to my amazement the hotel guides from different groups were friendly and quite knowledgeable. We did not have a guide, but the guides from other groups would stop us and say that on such and such a plant around the corner, look for the red eye frog, white bats etc. all of which could be found exactly where they said we could find them and this from hotel guides who were not even part of our group.
A return to the same forest in the afternoon was a sheer delight. Nobody was on the trails and one could savor the details, watch the howler and whitefaced monkeys, toucan, parrots etc., foraging on fruiting trees. Exquisite. That about summarizes Tortuguero.
My overall impression is that the area is great, but the park is not. Private individuals, Canos Palmas, CCC and the local hotels are doing more to preserve the area than the park with a far larger budget. One of the park's projects to come on line soon is a recycling plant and I am told poaching is less than it was a few years ago, but for now it serves as a shining model of how not to run a park.
The tour starts with a 20-minute video which explained that the canopy is where most of the diversity in the rainforest can be found. The video progresses to the clumsy climbing devices of old, and culminates in this tram, which, with "surprisingly little impact" allows visitors to see the canopy close-up. Sounds great!
We waited and waited for our turn, finally getting in -- five to a gondola plus one guide. The tram started moving and for the first five minutes of the approximately one hour tour we were only a meter or so off the ground, gradually increasing to where we are about 10 meters above the ground. The guide was fairly knowledgeable, even correctly naming some genera of plants by their Latin names -- he knew he had biologists on board. At the 10-meter level, we noticed that in addition to the normal creepers the nearby trees all had high tension cables pulling them away from the tram. The guide explained that these cables are used to keep the trees from falling on the tram if they should fall.
Just beyond this area, we saw that for a significant portion of the ride there are almost no trees They have all fallen -- apparently because of the tension put on them by the cables!
So we did actually get a bird's-eye view, not of canopy, but of clearings and a chasm. Then up around the turnstile we went, and back the same way we came (five meters higher). Still no view of the canopy however (well below canopy level). Adding insult to injury, it being late afternoon, it started to rain. The gondola did have a rain fly, but each time the gondola stopped to let passengers on or off, it would sway and the accumulated puddle would douse the group. In a nutshell this tour was roughly equivalent to what you would see if you climb to the top of a tall ladder in a second growth forest.
The tour neither reaches primary forest, nor does it give you a glimpse into the canopy. We did not even have an opportunity to photograph the few interesting hummingbirds seen as the gondola was always moving. On the whole, this disappointing tour is very much like a walk in the rain forest just high enough above the ground so that one need not worry about stepping on snakes. It would be perfect for those accustomed to seeing the world from a slow-moving wheelchair with no brakes. For those who have never seen a primary forest, anything resembling a dense mesh of trees and vines is impressive, but to the trained eye, this forest is damaged goods at best, and brings one to ask: "What about the canopy?"
As a final note, apparently encouraged by their success with the current venture, the owners have plans to build additional trams in the dry forest. Most of their business is one-time-visits of gullible cruise ship tourists, the perpetual supply of which is all but assured. To be sure, I had had other non-biologists tell me back in Nicaragua that this was a ripoff, but I attributed this to untrained people not knowing what to look for in the forest canopy. I was wrong: everyone who goes once feels they were ripped off, but few have the courage to admit it.
Although the forest is not extensive, wildlife is abundant and visible without being baited. The forest is just small enough so students do not get lost for more than a few hours at a time, yet large enough to contain significant diversity. The trails are marked by "cookies": round slices of fallen trees laid out at one-pace intervals, which keep trails from turning very muddy and permit easy recognition of less-used trails. These do get slippery when wet, a problem solved by nailing a piece of mesh wire to each.
Here is a great model for how to run a park with minimal impact, low cost, and a mecca for the biology student or tourist alike, provided you are willing to put up with mosquitos, rain and the odd hognose viper -- which also like to rest on cookies.
What ideas and practices I saw that could be imported were from the private groups. In addition, I found that the ecotourism development models practiced in Costa Rica are rife with mismanagement, sloth, and a desire for a quick buck from gullible tourists. Not something I want to import into Nicaragua!
Dr. Eric van den Berghe is Department Head, Biology and Natural Sciences at Ave Maria College, San Marcos, Nicaragua and concurrently Director of the La Flor Wildlife Refuge, one of the first attempts to link sea turtle conservation and ecotourism in Nicaragua. He is also is also co-founder of Ecotourism International of Nicaragua, S.A., the first ecological tourism company ever established in that country. He can be reached at einsa@ibw.com.ni
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