Protecting Endangered Ecosystems Costa Rica’s Seamounts Marine Management Area
With a stroke of its president’s pen, Costa Rica recently took a critical step in sustainable development and protecting ocean biodiversity, creating a giant Costa Rica conservation area of a million 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 long been the jewel of Costa Rica parks. That island sits atop an underwater mountain range (called a seamount), so dazzling, so wonderful, so full of sea 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 have seen it or been there in your imagination. It’s the 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 famous 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 for its tropical beauty, Costa Rica is an enormously popular tourist destination but few visitors know that this small country, occupying about 1/10,000 of the world’s surface area, has led the way toward sustainable development.
Virtually 1/4 of it is reserved for national parks and preserves.
Over the past 20 years or so, it has restored about 25% of its forests and is on its way to being the first carbon neutral country within the next 10 years.
It’s also the first country to have its president announce that it wants to end man’s unending war with nature and make peace with it.
“Costa Rica is a small country, but it can be a great leader. Nearly 60 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 and determination 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 almost 4,000 square miles.
Critical habitat to many species, including highly endangered scalloped sharks and ancient leatherback sea turtles, is now preserved into perpetuity. Commercial trawlers that are decimating our oceans and marine ecosystems won’t have the opportunity to decimate this underwater ecosystem. Marine animals and an ecosystem that took ages to form will continue to flourish.
140 years ago, President Ulysses S. Grant created the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, saving a complete terrestrial ecosystem from rapacious opportunists.
Good governance, Mr. President.
Seamounts Marine Management Area is far larger than Yellowstone and preserves a complete marine ecosystem. A well earned “day of national pride for Costa Rica.”
Good governance, Mme. President.
Isn’t it time to escape from that small boring cubicle and take that long need Costa Rica vacation?
It’s only the size of little West Virginia, but our Latin American neighbor to the south hosts almost 5% of all of the plant and animal species on the planet including “the most beautiful island” in the world, superb Cocos Island.