Detailed inventory of the Rincon Rainforest's biodiversity has not yet been possible (the first priority is to get it off the timber and plantation market). However, rapid survey (as well as its formal categorization into three Holdridge Life Zones) shows clearly that its fauna and flora are as species-rich and unique as are those of Estación Biológica Pitilla on the eastern side of Volcan Orosi, in the most northeastern corner of the ACG. To put this in context, Pitilla has been intensively surveyed and has the greatest insect species diversity of any site in Costa Rica.
The combination of the specific location of the Rincon Rainforest and its specific biological traits give it special biological importance to the ACG:
1) The addition of the Rincon Rainforest will more than double the contiguous area of this rainforest type in the ACG.
2) The lower elevations of the Rincon Rainforest contain thousands of species of lowland rainforest biodiversity that occur nowhere else in the ACG.
3) The Estacion Pitilla area survey has encountered the greatest species richness of any area in the ACG, and the incorporation of the Rincon Rainforest is therefore doubling the area of habitat for the most species-rich sector of the entire ACG.
4) When an area of habitat is as small as is the wetter eastern end of the ACG - about 30,000 ha - every hectare of size increase is an important antidote to the negative impact of insularity.
5) Thousands of species of ACG dry forest insects and birds migrate to the wet eastern end of the ACG to pass the severe annuald dry season. Adding the Rincon Rainforest will greatly increase the wet area to which these species can migrate, and therefore help to conserve the ACG dry forest.
6) The Rincon Rainforest will increase the overall area of the low-to-intermediate elevation wetter eastern end of the ACG by about 30%, a highly significant increase in size of the part of the ACG that acts as a "life boat" for the dry forest ecosystem as global warming comes upon us.
But the Rincon Rainforest is also of great managerial importance to the ACG administration and conservation process. The current ACG boundary at 900-1000 m elevation is very far from roads and efficient supervision. This boundary is on steep and very difficult terrain. It is virtually impossible to prevent poaching of animals and trees along that boundary. While this transgression is minimal today, if the area is logged and purchased for plantation crops (most likely, gmelina or palm heart plantations), the workers circulating through this uninhabited area will be a constant and unavoidable invasion problem. When the Rincon Rainforest is purchased and merged with the ACG, the ACG boundary then becomes the boundary of Rincon Rainforest with the lower elevation contemporary agroscape and its many resident landowners. This boundary lies near an all-weather road (from Dos Ríos to Gavilan to Buenos Aires to Colonia Libertad - see especially the most recent map below), that crosses flat and easily traversed terrain. It has been the ACG experience that such a boundary is both easy to supervise and generally honored by its (many) neighbors. All of these neighbors are strongly influenced by the ACG Biological Education Program, which teaches basic biology in the ACG to all 4th, 5th and 6th grade students in all 43 neighboring schools (including those in the four towns listed above). Additionally, the projects and employment directly in the Rincon Rainforest sector will further integrate it with this neighboring community.
The Rincon Rainforest can be conserved because it can be merged with an established, consolidated and endowed conservation area. It can be added to the ACG with relatively little increase in management costs. Furthermore, part of these management costs can be recovered through savings gained through the overall joining of the margin of the ACG directly with the margin of the agricultural landscape. Finally, if this campaign can obtain the funds for the land purchase, other sources will fund a management endowment for the Rincon Rainforest sector and biodvelopment projects that will cover many of the management costs through their direct activities.
In 1997, the owners of the Rincon Rainforest collectively came to the ACG and asked if they could be bought out for inclusion in the ACG. Some had already let contracts for logging their remaining old-growth forest, and others were exploring gmelina and palmito contracts. However, they all decided that they could generate more income by selling to the ACG. It was likewise clear that some of them actually preferred to see their properties go into conservation rather than low-grade agriculture.
After two days of walking these forests in January 1998, it was obvious that the ACG should include it. The properties are outlined above. Each square on the grid is one square kilometer (100 hectares). However, the ACG had just suffered a 30% reduction in its management endowment to meet the legal costs of the Santa Elena expropriation (completed in April 2000), and there were simply no funds available for further land purchase. The owners agreed that they would stop all activity and give us until March 1999 to come up with a purchase plan and most of the payment. However, the ACG fund-raising process was at that time focused on completing the purchase (that began in 1992) of the lands joining the southern and northern sectors of the ACG (Volcan Rincon de la Vieja to Volcan Cacao). This $2 million land purchase, termed the "Bridge", was successfully completed with a grant from the W. Alton Jones Foundation in January 1999.
As of March 1999, $121,153 from 33 private donors had been raised, which was obviously not sufficient to even suggest a down payment for the entire Rincon Rainforest. The ACG therefore met with the owners in late February 1999 and told them that 1) we could not honor our commitment to buy them as a single unit, 2) they were therefore free to seek whatever buyers they could, and 3) we would continue the effort to raise the funds and buy their properties individually as funds accumulated. We moved from a grace period to a race against time.
THE LOGGING THREAT
The owners are desperate to liquidate their holdings to reinvest elsewhere. The Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE) grants legal logging permits, albeit slowly. Each large tree was worth about $200 to its owner. There are about 5 such trees in each hectare of most of the forest we are purchasing. It is clear that the project is basically purchasing the trees and the land is "free". Such trees average about 200 years old. The coming dry season (January-April) will be the test. Any forest that we have not purchased by then runs a very high risk of being logged exactly as an old bean field headed back to rainforest.
All of the Rincon Rainforest owners have title to their properties. Owners tend to use the purchase price to buy other properties with better farming potential, pay off loans for agricultural development in other areas, or urban infrastructure, vehicles, and/or investment securities. Once purchased, the properties are held by the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund. As mentioned above, they will later be transferred to the State when the Rincon Rainforest is fully consolidated. This delay is to give time to fully consolidate blocks of purchases, arrange land trades with neighbors, and be free of the State bureaucracy in management questions during the early years of forest restoration and biodevelopment. For example, the pastures checkerboarded into the Rincon Rainforest may be most quickly eliminated by a) planting gmelina and other living endowment on them, b) using them as biodegredation sites for clean agricultural waste, and c) even sometimes putting cattle back on them. These management practices all run awry of the formal legislation for State-owned property. There will come a time when Costa Rican conservation legislation is sufficiently goal-implemented that such a delay will not be needed, but legislation is still undergoing evolution in that direction.
To help save the Rincon Rainforest write a check to the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund - GDFCF
Send it to Professor Daniel H. Janzen, Department of Biology, 415 South University Avenue, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
The GDFCF is a 501.c.3 non-profit charitable organization
