The Bosque Lluvioso Río Costa Rica will ultimately protect between 4000 and 5000 acres of primary rain forest lands in central Costa Rica.
The economic foundation of the project rests upon the development of the Bosque Lluvioso Exploratory, a science and education-based rain forest facility to be constructed on a 30-acre, previously cleared portion of the forest. The Exploratory includes an Academy or school for Costa Rican and international students and researchers interested in participating with INBio on projects under their direct supervision.
The project is also an ecotourism facility with a number of hands-on, interactive features for exploring the rain forest. While the Bosque Lluvioso Exploratory promises to be a uniquely entertaining research station on the principles of sustainable architecture and design, our main goal is the permanent protection of a large tract of primary forest lands contiguous to the Braulio Carrillo National Park.
In Keeping with current notions of “best practices” regarding forest restoration, the Bosque Lluvioso Project seeks to restore tropical rain forests in several ways. First, in a far reaching watershed restoration strategy, the Bosque will acquire additional acres of contingent land tracts thereby expanding and protecting an important extension of biological corridors in Central America. These lands represent a patchwork of varying degrees of forest degradation and are natural laboratories for studying ecological succession of tropical rain forest and restoration technologies. The forest corridors are essential to the long-term preservation of biodiversity for countless plant, animal, amphibian and insect species in the Western Hemisphere.
Second, forest restoration will increase the share of rain forest that will be utilized, thus ensuring a more stable hydrologic balance throughout the Bosque landscape and to communities downstream. A portion of secondary rain forest lands will be perpetually protected and available for studies of ecological succession and restoration techniques. As part of the overall strategy to “restart rainforest”, degraded portions of the acquired landscapes will be made available for proper ecological succession research and demonstration projects in forest restoration technologies, multi-cropping/forest farming techniques, sustainable agriculture, food and medicinal crop research and ecotourism education. The technologies of tropical forest restoration will have wide application well beyond the boundaries of the Bosque project. The practical application of the research will be incorporated in the interactive education programs of the Exploratory pavilions.