Mr. W's EnviroBlog

Pura Vida

Greetings from Costa Rica!  I’m sitting on the balcony of the dining hall having a cup of local shade-grown coffee and listening to the birds scream.  They seem to start just before 5am, so things get going early.  Today is our last day exploring the Las Cruces property.  While my digital camera is dead, perhaps I can post some favorite pics tonight in San Jose if the hotel has good wireless.  Altogether, this has been a very productive trip.  Brett and I are confident we can put together a great summer course/experience for our students.

We rolled in so late last night, I could not really tell much about Las Cruces.  Day light comes around 5 am here, so I quickly got an idea.  It is beautiful! Brett and I grabbed a cup of coffee and did some birdwatching for about an hour before breakfast.  My favorite find was a pair of Toucans attacking their reflection in a window.  Here is one in a tree just over my head:

Toucan at Las Cruces

Las Cruces is another OTS site, but in the very southern corner of Cost Rica (see Map below).  The original property was the Wilson Botanical Garden, and this beautifully manicured garden remains at the heart of the 300+ hectare facility.  The true mission of Las Cruces is biological research-particularly in the area of restoration ecology.  Las Cruces has acquired hundreds of acres of rainforest fragments and pastures and researchers come from all over the world to study human impacts on rainforest and how to “repair” them.

Our current location

Click here for a flickr slideshow for more images of the biological station.  Brett and I toured the ground this morning and took a quick hike in the rainforest.

This afternoon, we took a field trip to a local farm to view shade-grown coffee and small-scale integrated organic farming methods.  I would post more pics, but my camera battery died and Brett forgot his USB cable.  I was so impressed by his conservation ethic.  This farmer grew coffee plants under banana trees and other native trees.  This method attracts wildlife (natural predators of pests) and reduces the need for inorganic fertilizers (certain trees enrich the soil).  That’s the simple version.  It is actually rather well-developed science–the kind taught at EARTH U (see previous blog posts).  Brett and I are thinking of having our kids work here for a day helping with the coffee crop.  Check out this web site that features this farmer, who belongs to a local growers co-op.  Tomorrow we will hike more of the property with a guide, then drive back to San Jose before flying out Thursday.

This morning we toured the dairy farm and integrated organic farm at EARTH U. before departing for the south.  The diary farm was a quite modern operation.  Students were artificially inseminating dairy cows when we arrived!  What we really came to see was their biogas electricity generation facility.  Manure from the pigs and cattle was used to generate methane, collected in large hanging blivets shown below:

Biogas Collection System

The gas is then piped to a generator that burns the methane to generate electricity.

Then we toured an integrated organic farm.  I was most impressed with the number of organic systems they featured from around the world.  The simplest explanation for this system was given to me by Rudolpho, the supervisor: “The plants feed the animals, the animals feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants.”  In this system, waste equals food for something else.  Nothing is wasted.  And of course, no pesticides, inorganic fertilizers or antibiotics are used.

The picture below shows the Mandala system, which I think originates in Brazil.  In the center is a circular pond, and there are eight concentric rings of plantings (one for each planet). The pond, when filled, will have fish and the small fenced area around it can house rabbits or chickens.

Mandala Garden

This 250 meter X 250 meter garden relies heavily on intercropping and polyculture.  Plants are selected to feed the owners and accomplish tasks like pest control.  For example, folks back home add marigolds to a garden to control nematodes (worms) that may damage roots.

We left EARTH about 10 am, then drove about 8 hours south-mostly in the RAIN-in a vintage Toyota Tercel with bad shocks.  We were probably 8,000-10,000 feet for over half the drive, so we saw a lot of white (clouds).  Had a flat tire on the way, but the driver changed the tire in under 5 minutes. We arrived at Las Cruces Biological Station another OTS site like La Selva.  It is located near the small town of San Vito near the Panamanian border. The food and lodging are wonderful, but I can’t tell you much about what it looks like until the clouds clear and the sun rises.

We left La Selva Biological Station around noon today, then drove about an hour west to Earth University.  At the website, you can find this description under Our Identity:

EARTH, inaugurated in1990, is an international, private, not-for-profit university dedicated to education, extension, research and the generation of value through production, transformation and commercialization activities. The academic program, leading to a “licenciatura” degree, emphasizes the agricultural sciences and the rational management of natural resources. The University seeks to contribute to sustainable development, with a special emphasis on the humid tropics; a region characterized by immense biological and cultural richness, yet threatened by social marginalization and inappropriate agricultural and natural resource management systems.

Pretty impressive facility, I must say.  Amazing what folks can do with enough resources.  The campus is a beautifully manicured modern university sprawling across 8,000 plus acres.  They recruit the best and the brightest mainly from Latin America.  The website states there are 400 students from 23 countries around the world. At least 80% of students are granted full or partial scholarship. EARTH U. has graduated 1,082 professionals from 19 countries in Latin America, Europe and Africa.  Below is the library building, obviously built with funds from the Kellogg Foundation.

Kellogg Library at EARTH U.

We were given tour of the grounds this afternoon by two sophomores.  Each has hopes of returning to their respective communities and beginning businesses in medical herbs or ecotourism.  The coolest thing we saw was an organic banana farm and processing plant.  They even use the banana stem leftovers to make banana paper.  Supermarket chain  Whole Foods has been selling EARTH University Brand bananas from the farm for a few years now.  So, find a Whole Foods store near you and support “the EARTH!”

Organic Banana Farm

The howler monkeys woke me up at 4:30 am this morning…

After breakfast, Brett and I hiked the La Selva property.  Most of the trails are paved with concrete, so most of this was safe and even walking.  We hiked most of the morning in old growth rainforest.  Reading about the density and diversity of tropical rainforest life in a textbook just does not come close to doing the real deal justice.

Although we spotted Great Green Macaws, Crested Guan, Blue Morpho butterfly, agouti, collared pecarry, collared anteater, Central America whiptail lizard and the Strawberry or Blue Jeans dart frog, I think my favorite sighting were the leaf-cutter ants.  We saw millions upon millions of these little guys at work.  Here is a picture of Brett pointing out a very obvious leaf-cutter ant trail winding through the grounds:

Ant trail at La Selva

Once we got into the rainforest, they were everywhere.  I can’t believe there are any trees left as fast as they seem to be working.  Here is a short video clip (10 sec) that I filmed of leaf-cutter ants at work:

Well, we made it!  Brett and I flew in to San Jose around 1pm, then drove about 1.5 hours north to La Selva Biological Reserach Station.  This station is a part of the Organization for Tropical Studies, which has been hosting research on tropical rainforests for decades.  We took at tour of the facilities before dinner and dark.  Within the first 15 minutes, we saw this howler monkey on the suspended bridge (sorry photois a bit blurry)!

Of course, it has rained all day here in the RAINFOREST in rainy season! Neat facility that could house our students for a few days.  We’ll hike the property in the morning.

Pura Vida!

The seniors are gone! I’ll miss them, but that leaves time for other things…so I’m traveling with a colleage, Brett Moyer,  to Costa Rica over the next week in order to scout out a possible science elective course for students at our school.  I’m thrilled to be heading back to Costa Rica.  Not sure what my connectivity will be like, but I hope to post some pictures and share some adventures.