La Amistad Biosphere Reserve Research Articles

The Protection of Forest Biodiversity can Conflict with Food Access for Indigenous People

International protected area (PA) management policies recognise the importance of respecting Indigenous rights. However, little research has been conducted to evaluate how these policies are being enforced. We evaluated whether Indigenous rights to access traditional food were being respected in La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica. By examining land management documents, we found that PA regulations have the potential to restrict traditional food access because these regulations ban shifting agriculture and heavily restrict hunting; these regulations do not address the harvest of edible plants. By working with Bribri people, we found multiple negative impacts that PAs had on: health, nutrition, passing on cultural teachings to youth, quality of life, cultural identity, social cohesion and bonding, as well as on the land and non-human beings. We propose three steps to better support food access in PAs in Costa Rica and elsewhere. First, a right to food framework should inform PA management regarding traditional food harvesting. Second, people require opportunities to define what harvesting activities are traditional and sustainable and these activities should be respected in PA management. Third, harvesting regulations need to be clearly communicated by land managers to resource users so people have the necessary information to exercise their rights to access food.

Shocks and Bribri Agriculture Past and Present

Shocks and Bribri Agriculture Past and Present

Regional and global conservation assessments for 200 vascular plant species from Costa Rica and Panama

We present 200 species conservation assessments covering Costa Rica and Panama. Fifty-two of these represent global conservation assessments and 148 regional conservation assessments. Species were selected on the basis that they were present in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve and deemed to be Keystone species for the reserve. We include basic taxonomic information, local names, uses, maps of the Extension of Occurrence and Area of Occupancy together with a discussion of the threats for each of the species assessed.

Dung-beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabeidae) from the Zona Protectora Las Tablas, Talamanca, Costa Rica

Dung-beetle species are considered an important focal indicator group in tropical forests. During 2007, eighteen traps were set in two permanent biodiversity plots during one week surveys in Las Tablas Protected Zone within La Amistad Biosphere Reserve. The main purpose of this study was to determine the group composition and diversity as the basis for permanent monitoring and to measure potential impacts of land use change and climate change on mountain diversity. Pitfall traps were placed randomly within the plots with human feces as bait. A total of 26 species distributed in 13 genera and six tribes were collected. The composition of species includes eight endemic species, seven for Costa Rica (CR) and Panama and one only for CR. The diversity found in this study was typical of previous studies in the region. Further sampling is needed to obtain the total number of species for the area. This study is part of an on-going research project about climate change impacts and biodiversity monitoring in this important ecoregion of Mesoamerica.

Conservation Through Sustainable Agriculture

Market garden cultivation is an important economic activity in the Cerro Punta watershed of the Chiriqui province in Panama. Since the watershed adjoins the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve (LABR), this analysis looks at the impact of the agricultural activities on people's livelihood, as well as the ecology of the watershed and the ecology of the LABR. This paper also analyzes the potential of market gardens to support the conservation of the biosphere reserve. Analysis suggests that the current agricultural practices are unsustainable and ecologically destructive, due to high dependence on agrochemicals and inefficient irrigation and cultivation on steep slopes. If improved, farming can become sustainable and be an incentive for supporting the conservation of the LABR. It is thus proposed that The Nature Conservancy (TNC) invest in sustainable market gardens management in order to maintain land productivity, reduce ecological impact on the watershed, and reduce threats on the biosphere reserve. It is also suggested that the principles of sustainable agriculture be replicated elsewhere around the biosphere reserve so as to support local livelihoods and conservation of the LABR.

Fire Ecology and Management in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Panama

The use of fire in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Panama, is a complex issue, especially given its biophysical, cultural, and socioeconomic context. A geographic gradient exists, depicting the threat from fire to the reserve. Areas around Volcan Baru have a high potential fire threat due to the biophysical aspects of the area and land-use activities. Fire use has a long cultural history in Panama. It continues to be frequently employed to clear land for swidden agriculture, cattle ranching on the Atlantic side of the Talamancan mountain range, and agricultural development on the Pacific side. Land tenure insecurity and perverse policies also incite its utilization for claiming land. Set fires often escape their boundaries and burn property, structures, crops, and fire-sensitive ecosystems. If left unchecked, anthropogenic fires pose a significant threat to both the ecological and socioeconomic well being of the Biosphere Reserve. Recommendations for the reserve's fire management plan focus on policy augmentation, educational outreach, monitoring, prevention, and fire research.

Deforestation in a Complex Landscape

Deforestation is often the primary threat to conservation goals in tropical countries. However, accessing the remote locations in which most remaining forests of conservation value occur makes it difficult to quantify deforestation trends and to galvanize preventive action. Using remotely sensed images we were able to quantify rates of forest loss in La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Panama. Annual deforestation rates were low between 1987 and 1998 at 0.05% but increased nearly 12-fold between 1998 and 2001 to 0.6%. Net forest loss was 0.56% between 1987 and 1998 and 2.34% between 1998 and 2001. Deforestation rates differed significantly between protected areas. Protected areas on the Caribbean side of the Biosphere Reserve experienced greater levels of deforestation than those on the Pacific, even though both absolute and percent forest cover are higher on the Caribbean. Most forest conversion was for cattle pasture and an area of industrial cattle ranching was identified within the Palo Seco and PILA protected areas as a priority for enforcement activities. Forest conversion to pasture was highly correlated with proximity to roads, rivers, and villages (p < 0.001). The spatial scale of correlation varied between feature types, suggesting a greater area of impact from roads and towns versus rivers. The acceleration of forest conversion from 1998 to 2001 confirms the negative ecological impact of the recent increase in population and development pressure in this previously isolated region.

Mapping Stakeholder Capacity in the La Amistad Biosphere Initiative

Panama and Costa Rica in 1988 created the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, an international transboundary effort for conservation development. The La Amistad effort is one of the oldest trans-boundary projects in Central America. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been prominent in this effort along with other NGOs and diverse other participants. Stakeholder (participant) identification and description is essential to understand the context of the many natural resource management and policy challenges of this cooperative effort. We found that needed contextual mapping has been overly selective and is not comprehensive enough. This has limited options for progress. Past contextual mapping has overlooked stakeholders who could aid the initiative as well as participants who are actively opposed to it. We offer questions and worksheets (matrices) that can be used to contextually map conservation projects to aid TNC and all other participants achieve conservation development in the common interest.

Introduction

This introduction first describes the context of La Amistad Biosphere Reserve and surrounding areas. Secondly, it examines natural resource problems present in the region and the concepts of sustainability, the common interest, and innovation through prototyping briefly. Third, it briefly describes our Yale University course, our analytic approach, and the field trip itself. The eleven papers in this volume, including the introduction and synthesis, describe results of our course and field trip in 2002. Combined, these papers are descriptive, analytical, and offer practical recommendations to improve decision making and management policy in regards to sustainability efforts in La Amistad, Bocas del Toro, Panama and Talamanca, Costa Rica regions.

Smallholder Agricultural Expansion in La Amistad Biosphere Reserve

Agricultural expansion by smallholder producers has been identified by management agencies as one of the main threats to the ecological integrity of La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, in Panama and Costa Rica. Promotion of cacao agroforestry has been proposed as a way to reduce the need for farmers to clear new land within the reserve. In order to realize this goal, the larger cultural, economic, and political forces that motivate agricultural expansion need to be examined, looking beyond the smallholder practices that are the immediately apparent causes of ecological degradation. The four main assumptions behind the proposal to promote smallholder cacao production in the buffer zone are explored: (1) cacao agroforestry is an ecologically benign agricultural system; (2) if cacao production were more financially viable, ecologically degrading activities, such as cattle grazing, would decrease; (3) migrants from other areas are primarily responsible for clearing land on the eastern side of the park; and (4) direct intervention at the smallholder level is the most effective means of preventing agricultural expansion. Our analysis demonstrates that while cacao agroforestry is an ecologically appropriate production system for the buffer zone of the park, price and production stabilization is important for assuring adoption by smallholders. We also suggest that both indigenous and migrant groups are responsible clearing forest for agriculture and that a more useful distinction for managers to make is between clearing enacted as part of sustainable vs. unsustainable management regimes. Finally, we recommend that the impact to the biosphere reserve caused by large-scale cattle and banana production not be overlooked.

Assessing Effectiveness of a Field-Trip Based Course in Professional Education

Field trips are important opportunities for students to learn and exercise integrative, interdisciplinary problem-solving skills for real-world situations. This paper examines the extent to which a field trip-based course in natural resource management contributes to the preparation of practitioners to solve complex environmental problems. It describes a field trip-based course at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the individuals involved in the course, and a field trip to the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica to carry out a rapid assessment of AMISCONDE, an integrated conservation and development project in southern Costa Rica. This paper also evaluates the success of the course in terms of how well it prepares students to deal with real-life natural resource management problems and in terms of the opportunity it provides to students to assess a natural resource management issue. The paper concludes that the course is to a large extent successful in the former and less so in the latter. It recommends the following for the planning and implementation of field trip based courses. During the period prior to the field trip, (1) instructors need to clarify course goals and how students are expected to meet those goals; (2) the majority of class time should be spent discussing the management problem that is the focus of the field trip; (3) instructors and students need to discuss and operationalize the policy sciences framework; and (4) the course should provide sessions on rapid assessment techniques and team building exercises. During the field trip, (1) time spent on the project should be maximized; (2) instructors should ensure that hosts understand that students will want to meet with stakeholders independently; and (3) group meetings among students and instructors should focus more on discussing events of the day instead of individual research projects.

Watershed Management in the Pacific Slope Buffer Zone of the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica

An analysis of watershed management in the Pacific slope of the Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica, was conducted as part of a larger analysis of Conservation International's Amistad Conservation and Development (AMISCONDE) Initiative. General impacts of land use conversion are described with particular reference to tropical montane regions under conditions like those found on the Pacific slope of the Talamanca range. The quality of watershed management across the region and within the San Jerónimo-Zapotal watershed, one of the AMISCONDE Initiative sites, is evaluated. Significant problems are indicated regarding soil erosion, sedimentation, and agrochemical delivery to streams. These problems are likely due in part to the clearing of forest for cultivation on steep, highly erodable lands with little control over the location and construction of fields and associated infrastructure; a shift in land use from pasture to coffee cultivation and attendant increases in pesticide use; and unsafe pesticide application procedures. A lack of coordination among regulatory agencies, a nationwide lack of information regarding indicators of watershed health, and a lack of prioritization of restoration efforts within the AMISCONDE Initiative are possible factors contributing to the persistence of these problems. The authors advocate increased coordination among government agencies; the creation of central institutions for gathering and disseminating information regarding water quality, pesticide use, and pesticide impacts; and the prioritization of AMISCONDE restoration efforts within the San Jerónimo-Zapotal watershed to focus on riparian zones and other sensitive areas.

Coffee Agroforestry Systems for Conservation and Economic Development

The agroforestry program of the AMISCONDE Initiative was implemented in 13 buffer zone communities of La Amistad Biosphere Reserve. This program introduced citrus (Citrus spp.) and promoted the widespread inclusion of poró (Erythrina poeppigiana) shade trees, ground story vegetation, and soil conservation techniques to the local cultivation of coffee (Coffea arabica var caturra). This program sought long-term socioeconomic and ecological health in these buffer zone communities through conservation and development projects such as coffee agroforestry systems. This paper examines the ecological and socioeconomic benefits of two introduced coffee agroforestry systems: coffee-poró and coffee-citrus. The project has decreased agrochemical inputs, integrated multi-strata vegetation, and implemented soil conservation techniques such as vetiver grass, cover crops, terraces, water channeling, and shade trees in an effort to sustainably manage coffee production on the steep buffer zone slopes. The agroforestry project of the AMISCONDE Initiative has likely improved the production of coffee ecologically and economically. However, new specialty markets should be explored to increase economic and ecological gains. Organic and fair trade coffee niche markets are suggested as alternatives for meeting the long-term AMISCONDE objectives of community development and conservation.

Simulating land-use decisions in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve buffer zone in Costa Rica and Panama

Human demand for agricultural products leads to land degradation, deforestation, habitat destruction, and loss of biodiversity. Effective management of land for both agricultural and conservation purposes remains central to sustainable development efforts. We describe development of a preliminary model that integrates ecological, economic, and social factors affecting land-use decisions in the buffer zone of the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve in Costa Rica and Panama. The model simulates potential shifts in the distribution of land among six alternative uses and the resulting impacts on the finances of rural families living within the buffer zone over the next decade. The output of interest is changes in land use as measured by the number of hectares in each of the six land-use classes. In baseline simulations, farmers tended to convert land, particularly forested hectares, into agricultural land uses. Sensitivity analysis showed that model results appeared more sensitive to economic and social factors than they did to ecological factors. Given the relatively short 10-year simulations, changes in topsoil-loss rates had no effect on final land-use distributions. Of four management strategies simulated, decreasing production costs by 25% yielded the largest final amount of cash on hand after 10 years. Generally, increasing tourism profit by 50% yielded the next-highest financial benefits, followed by increasing conservation subsidy by 50% and decreasing annual interest rate by 50%. We consider the primary contribution of the present model to be examination, at the individual farm level, of the relative influence of ecological, economic, and social factors on land-use decisions and distribution. Ideally, such studies will have the potential to influence management interventions that enable buffer zone farmers to achieve financial security and, as a by-product, balance land-use distribution in buffer-zone agroecosystems, which may help to maintain biodiversity.

Colonist Land‐Allocation Decisions, Land Use, and Deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon Frontier

As one of the last agricultural frontiers of the humid tropics, Amazonia is the largest area of the world currently undergoing frontier settlement. Although the earliest intrusions of foreign populations into Amazonia date from pre-Hispanic times, the large-scale entrance of peasant colonists into the vast region is a recent phenomenon. Much of this movement represents the spontaneous migration of peoples, but governments in the region have also become increasingly interested in opening up and integrating Amazonia to national and international economies. These actions are frequently seen as potential solutions to a number of national problems, including the need to increase agricultural production, correct spatial imbalances in the distribution of population, exploit frontier lands for reasons of national security, and defuse potentially serious political problems resulting from the existing agrarian structure, landlessness, and unemployment. The upper basin of the Amazon in Ecuador, bordering on the eastern slopes of the Andes, is one such area of frontier settlement. Recent decades have witnessed the rapid conversion of these Amazonian forests to agricultural uses through a series of schemes bearing such labels as land development and colonization. Most forest intervention in the region has come at the hands of colonist farmers attempting to establish land claims along transport routes originally constructed to aid in petroleum exploration and exploitation. These are farmers who formerly have made a living in long-established farmlands and who, for various reasons (population pressures, pervasive poverty, maldistribution of farmland, lack of inputs for intensive cultivation, lack of nonagrarian livelihood opportunities, and generally inadequate rural development) have been increasingly squeezed out of their homelands. A marginal person by virtue of his low socioeconomic and political status, the farmer often perceives

Financial and economic analyses of agroforestry systems and a commercial timber plantation in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica

A possible method of protecting biosphere reserve core zones is to encourage transition and buffer zone activities which are compatible with the core and which provide sufficient returns to the human population to make entry into the core zone unnecessary. The AMISCONDE project is promoting block plantations and coffee/tree agroforestry systems to do this, but did not analyze their financial or economic feasibility. Unprofitable systems will not be adopted without subsidy and are not sustainable after a project ends. Analyses show internal rates of return exceeding 30% for coffee/tree combinations both with and without project subsidies. Coffee/tree systems have significantly higher returns than coffee without trees, reduce the risk from coffee price fluctuations, and reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. Returns from a block plantation of cypress are a small fraction of coffee and coffee/tree system returns, but still are positive and have the advantage of requiring much smaller initial investments. The systems analyzed seem likely to be sustainable and to contribute to project conservation and development objectives.