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In Costa Rica, sustainable tourism is no longer enough for conservation

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LIMÓN, Costa Rica — On board Jurgen Stein’s two-seat gyrocopter, tourists can see the rainforest like never before. From the sky, the Selva Bananito Reserve looks like an endless stretch of broccoli. “We have 11 life zones. Almost 5% of the global biodiversity exists here,” Stein says, pointing at the reserve that’s part of the Bosque de las Madres biological corridor. Nestled in the Talamanca Mountains in southeastern Costa Rica, his private reserve stretches to the fringe of La Amistad International Park, the largest nature reserve in Central America that straddles more than 400,000 hectares (162,000 acres) of the border region between Costa Rica and Panama. Stein’s own reserve, a more modest 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres), was inherited largely from his father, who purchased the area in 1974 for farming and logging. But Stein refused to continue clearing the forest, and instead turned 1,250 hectares (3,088 acres) into an ecological reserve in 1994, keeping only a third of the property devoted to farming. Selva Bananito is home to birds such as the great jacamar (Jacamerops aureus), anteaters like the northern tamandua (Tamandua mexicana) and the silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus), and the Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata). It also hosts jaguars (Panthera onca) and pumas (Puma concolor). “When my father was 90, I gave him the footprint of a jaguar and a photo of a puma looking at one of our trap cameras. He stared at the picture and cried the whole day,” Stein says. Birds enthusiasts can explore Selva Bananito to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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