Costa Rica’s La Amistad Biosphere

By Patrick Totty

This 2,200-square mile tropical park may shelter more species than any other preserve on earth

In 1948, Costa Rica decided to give up having an army. Its citizens reasoned that the monies being spent on arms might be better applied to education and infrastructure. Besides, they knew the United States had always had a great affection for Costa Rica and  would never allow the small country ever to come to harm.

They were correct: What’s not to like about this 20,000-square mile tropical nation? It’s a thriving democracy, that although it is not wealthy, does not have the huge income disparity between affluent and poor that has plagued its Central American neighbors. Literacy is high, the rule of law prevails and the free market is nurtured.

Those conditions alone are enough to have inspired the observation that in terms of stability and civility, Costa Rica is “the Switzerland of Central America.”

Ah, but there is so much more. The country, a highland plateau flanked by two ocean-fronting swaths of forested tropical lowlands, swamps and savannah, can fit almost anybody’s idea of paradise. On the highland, where most people live, it is perpetual spring. Temperatures average in the low to mid-70s, making tropical humidity more than bearable. In the lowlands, some of the world’s richest, lushest rainforests remain uncut, unsullied and protected.

In fact, Costa Rica has turned over 20 percent of its area to national parks and preserves, a higher percentage than any other country on earth. The stakes involved are much higher than just the preservation of a small country’s precious forest cover and biological diversity.

For Costa Rica’s forests are the place where the meeting between the flora and fauna of North and South America reach their climax. Here is the great ingathering of species from two continents, competing with and adapting to one another in a luxuriant locale.

So it’s little wonder that UNESCO early on (in 1983) designated portions of Costa Rica’s rainforest as World Heritage Site Biosphere Reserves. The largest site – with a name to match – is the Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves/La Amistad National Park, a string of parks, preserves, Indian reservations and protected areas that together shelter one of the earth’s richest ecologies.

The resulting 2,200-square-mile preserve, an area about the size of Banff National Park in Canada, protects 115 species of fish, 250 species of reptiles and amphibians, 215 species of mammals and 560 species of birds. Of all the national parks in the world – and  it is by no means the biggest – La Amistad may well possess the greatest number of plant and animal species.

Physically, the park rests mostly on an ancient cordillera that has undergone heavy erosion from tropical precipitation, producing steep slopes and a dramatic silhouette. The mountain backbone is girt by foothills.

The climb up through the biosphere’s eight distinct life zones takes visitors from lowland tropical rain forests up through cloud forests to glacial lakes and tundra-like bogs. A major part of the forest is oak growing among a profusion of ferns, orchids and other epiphytic plants that opportunistically grow for any tree branch, high or low.

Several Indian tribes that have been in the area for centuries, numbering about 10,000 people total, occupy reservations within the park. They are guaranteed perpetual rights to both their land and subsistence from it. Despite the long history of nearby human habitation, the very size of the park has resulted in extensive areas that have never been exploited by humans, native or immigrant.

Given Costa Rica’s relative closeness to the U.S., fairly developed infrastructure and transportation system, and friendliness to Americans, La Amistad can figure in many people’s vacation plans as a perfect foreign winter getaway. Few other protected rain forests on earth offer such diversity, wildness and accessibility.