A joint conservation and protection effort by Grupo Vidriero Centroamericano, VICAL and the Costa Rican Tourism Board seeks to value the country’s beautiful scenery and natural resources through the development of responsible consumption habits and choosing glass packaging that is natural, 100% recyclable and reusable. “For the Costa Rican Tourism Board, it is a pride, but more than anything, a...

The National Seismology Network (RSN) informed that the Turrialba Volcano has increased the sporadic eruptions since July 23, with passive emissions of ash. The ash columns generally reach between 100 and 300 meters above the crater; however, since the evening of August 1st the activity has been more sustained, and a tremor signal has been persistent as per the information gathered by the surve...

July 29, 1968 lives in the memory of many Costa Ricans as a tragic day in which more than 80 people lost their lives as a result of the eruption of Arenal Volcano, known back then only as Arenal Mountain, many didn’t know, and others didn’t want to believe it was a volcano. The Arenal Volcano is considered the youngest volcano in the country and also one of the most dangerous. That day, the ...

Works at the Poas Volcano National Park advance at good pace and  is expected to reopen for tourist visitation shortly with a new security model that involves 5 shelters: 3 new modules and the remodeling of 2 existing infrastructures as well as new protocols in the management of visitors. The five shelters are being built at the same time, the new ones include one shelter with a capacity for 18...

The Costa Rican National Coast Guard Service has seized in a period of four months, March through June, 103 illegal fishing artifacts such as drift nets and fish traps in waters of the Central Pacific. The majority of the artifacts were found in the river mouths, specially Parrita (40%) and Savegre (25%) Rivers and surrounding areas, where it is illegal to place these types of instruments beca...

The CRx5 Challenge is an initiative of the Association Costa Rica por Siempre (ACRXS) and the National System of Areas of Conservation (SINAC) to promote visitation to some of the country’s Wildlife Protected Areas, the natural beauty in each of them, the work of the park rangers and the efforts being done in national conservation while at the same time enjoying an Eco-tourism adventure. This...

75 days ago the Zoo Ave Rescue Center in Costa Rica celebrated the birth of a King Vulture (Sarcoramphus papa), an event that scientists had been awaiting for years. The parents of the baby vulture have lived in captivity and isolated for over 28 years and they have attempted to reproduce for the last decade unsuccessfully. In an interview with Teletica Channel 7, Dennis Janik, founder of...

An amazing new beetle was discovered in Costa Rica at the La Selva Biological Station in the lowland Atlantic rainforest of Northeastern Costa Rica. This beetle rides around on the backs of army ants as though it was horseback riding. To its predators or to the human eye, it looks like a second ant abdomen, given its hard, hairy shell. Scientists who discovered the beetle named it Nymphister Krona...

The President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, the Minister of Environment and Energy, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, international guests, personnel of the Cocos Marine Conservation Area (ACMC) of the National System of Areas of Conservation (SINAC), celebrated the 40th anniversary of the declaration of Isla del Coco as a National Park. Alvarado reconfirmed the commitment of the government “to contin...

Personnel from the Protection and Control Program of the Guanacaste Conservation Area arrested two men of last names Sanchez Mayorga and Sanchez Sanarrusia as they were hunting in the Guanacaste National Park, four other men were with them at the moment of the arrest but were able to escape. According to information provided by the Guanacaste Conservation Area (ACG in Spanish), Sanchez Mayorga ...

President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, and the Minister of Treasury, Rocio Aguilar, signed this Monday Law No.9573 which grants Costa Rica a line of credit for $500 million from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) –known as Conditional Credit Loan for Investment Projects (CCLIP) - for the development of sustainable electric projects. Individual loan contracts will stem from this CCLIP ...

During the commemoration of National Tree Day in Costa Rica, the State of the Nation Report points out the that the country has taken a leading position in the region when it comes to forest cover recovery, however, many challenges still lay ahead. By putting into practice different legal restrictions such as the prohibition to modify the use of land; incentives like the payment for environment...

Through an executive decree, Costa Rica will establish safe routes in waters of the Pacific to increase marine security and prevent collisions between vessels and cetaceans. By creating an “Area-to-be-Avoided” and a traffic separation scheme, the country hopes to protect marine environment, particularly the migratory population of humpback whales and other cetaceans that travel the waters of G...

During his first trip as President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado held a meeting at the National Geographic Society’s headquarters in Washington D.C. with leaders in conservation and environmental sustainability. President Alvarado and the Minister of Environment, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, touched on topics such as the challenge to become carbon neutral, conservation of forests, and ocean health...

The Committee of Rare Species and Ornithological Registers in Costa Rica, informed that they have included the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys), in their records for the species in Isla del Coco. This species of bird was spotted by park rangers, Josue Morales and Manuel Ruiz in the area known as Wafer Bay in the Isla del Coco National Park on May 15, 2018. The small bird has bl...

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the plastic industry in Costa Rica is the third largest in the country, and they are also biggest importers of plastic in all Central America. An estimated 550 tons of plastic are dumped daily in Costa Rica; 80% of which end up in the ocean, 11% in landfills and dump sites, while only 9% are recycled. Making Costa Rica a plastic fre...

The Costa Rican embassy in Bern, Switzerland, became the first to enter the Carbon Neutrality Country Program of the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica; it is also the first embassy in Switzerland to reach this accomplishment. In order to reach carbon neutrality, the embassy had to calculate its emissions, as well as the mitigation and compensation of the same, and complete the v...

President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, and the Minister of Environment Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, in the frame of the World Environmental Day, signed a directive that regulates the management, consumption and labeling of single use plastic in public institutions. “These actions respond to the unequivocal commitment this government has to reach carbon neutrality of the economy”, expressed Alvar...

Today, June 5, we celebrate the World Environmental Day, a day meant to encourage worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. Costa Rica celebrated with the signing of a decree by President Carlos Alvarado and the Minister of Environment, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, for the expansion of the Rincon de la Vieja National Park, with the purpose of strengthening the protec...

The activity at the Poas volcano was captured on video this past May 25th, as members of the National Seismology Network were doing maintenance work in the area. The impressive footage shows the degasification with an important column of water vapor. “The degasification is persistent but passive, it consists in low temperature fumaroles rich in water vapor with a relatively low content of ma...

Costa Rica is a perfect spot for bird-watching, and it offers a number of great places where exotic and unique species of birds can be appreciated in their natural habitat, one of this places is the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor in Quizarra, Perez Zeledon. This biological corridor also known as Los Cuisingos is managed by the Tropical Scientific Center, the land was donated by Alexander ...

The Turrialba Volcano in Costa Rica has been in a period of relative calm throughout the past weeks with the constant emission of gas as vapor. On Sunday afternoon, however, the volcano had another eruption of importance with emission of ash and a column that reached 500 meters above the crater (3,800 meters above sea level). Another eruption was registered at 9 a.m. of Monday morning, with ...

A group of tourists found the baby sloth alone in Playa Cocles, Puerto Viejo, Limon, and brought him to the Jaguar Rescue Center, where the personnel and volunteers took on the task of searching for the mother. The baby sloth weighed only 400 grams. They recorded the baby sloth’s cry and went into the forest armed with speakers playing the recording over and over. It took them two days but they...

Back in March 35 members of congress approved in first debate a project that would allow trawling practices once again disputing the previous ruling of the Constitutional Chamber which annulled the trawling permits that had been issued by Costa Rican Fisheries and Aquaculture Institute (Incopesca). Today, the Constitutional Chamber, known as Sala IV in Costa Rica, declared unconstitutional the ...

Information released by the Municipal Consulting and Development Institute (IFAM) as part of the VI Recycling National Encounter, shows that Costa Rica is currently recycling close to 264 tons of ordinary waste out of the 4000 generated on a daily basis, which represents close to 6.6%. The numbers have improved from previous years, back in 2014 the Ministry of Health estimated that only 1.26% o...

In his last days as President of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis signed at the beginning of May, an executive decree to declare the Hammerhead Shark Sanctuary of Golfo Dulce, a critical nursery habitat for the Scalloped Hammerhead, a shark that is listed as Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. “This Shark Sanctuary designation ...

Britt launched a new line of coffees: Hábitat. The new blends are inspired in Costa Rican wildlife and go hand in hand with the commitment of the company on matters of environmental sustainability, including the protection of native species in the region. “These blends will support conservation efforts throughout the country, with focuses on specific native species. Our first blend is dedicated...

President of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado was emphatic during the inauguration ceremony about the importance of protecting the environment and of taking the necessary steps towards reaching the country goal of becoming a carbon-neutral economy by 2021. The Presidential Inauguration Ceremony was a carbon neutral event, the president, his family and team arrived at the ceremony aboard Nyuti the fi...

During the months of March through June the Cerro de la Muerte (Mountain of Death) in Costa Rica offers a unique natural spectacle, with hundreds of fireflies or lightning bugs that make their appearance. The Cerro de la Muerte is the place fireflies pick for their reproductive season due to the climate conditions and the dense vegetation, it is a very rare chance to see many of these winged be...

The lake at the Poas Volcano National Park in Alajuela, Costa Rica has drawn the attention of scientists and investigators that believe its extreme conditions could offer information about life on Mars. According to Guillermo Alvarado, geologist of the National Seismology Network (RSN), the characteristics of the lake make it almost impossible for there to be any form of life, due to its acidit...

The presidential inauguration ceremony in Costa Rica will be celebrated on Tuesday, May 8, when Carlos Alvarado will be sworn in for a four-year term of office; this year, for the first time, the ceremony will be carbon neutral, which means that measures are being taken to reduce the waste and limit the carbon footprint, and also, to offset the unavoidable emissions generated by the event. The...

Thanks to the effort of neighbors of the areas of Cuajiniquil, El Jobo and Puerto Soley in La Cruz, Guanacaste, the 732.1 hectares that make up Santa Elena Bay are now a Marine Protected Area. The objective of establishing this zone as a Marine Management Area is to reserve it for particular purposes, among them the conservation of marine life, the promotion of recreation and tourism and the s...

Photo by Andy Mann / Waitt Foundation Facebook The expedition between Galapagos Island National Park in Ecuador and Coco Island National Park in Costa Rica took place April 2 through April 13 with the purpose of identifying marine migratory species that use this route and to quantify their distribution, abundance and diversity of their predators. The expedition was possible thanks to the joi...

Wednesday, May 4, the Costa Rican Government entered into an agreement with technological platform Global Fishing Watch to improve the controls over illegal fishing. The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Environment and Energy hope to improve through this alliance with Global Fishing Watch the analysis and mapping of the activities in Costa Rican waters and the patters of fishing in...

A new species of Vanilla flower was discovered in Costa Rica in the country of Corredores in the South Zone of Costa Rica, close to the Panama frontier; the flower was named Vanilla-karen-chistianae in honor of Costa Rican scientist Christiana Figueres Olsen. The discovery was made by Patricia Lehmann Calderon, student of Management of Natural Resources of the UNED who worked alongside investig...

The images of a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle entangled in a fishing net and carrying several plastic bottles in the middle of the ocean taken earlier this month by scientists during the expedition between Galapagos Island in Ecuador and Coco’s Island in Costa Rica, has raised awareness on how the contamination of the oceans is affecting the marine life. Scientists freed the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle...

Costa Rica and Ecuador signed an agreement of cooperation for the conservation of the marine species and birds that will allow the strengthening of the conservation actions, control and protection of the ecosystems in the national parks Coco Island and Galapagos Island respectively. “The agreement Frame of Cooperation between the Direction of the National Park Galapagos in Ecuador and the Natio...

The 2018 wildfires season has been the worse in Costa Rica in the past three years. According to the National System of Areas of Conservation (SINAC) a total of 47 wildfires have been recorded from January 1st through April 17 while in this same lapse in 2017 there were 33 forest fires, 36 in 2016 and in 2015 a total of 34. As it is common 67% of these fires affected areas in the North Pacif...

Costa Rica has still a long road ahead when it comes to recycling practices, and a new digital platform hopes to help change this reality by offering “virtual money” that can be exchanged for discounts on products, services and experiences The way it works is simple, every time a user recycles they receive “virtual money” or credits, as they accumulate these credits they can opt for discounts...

A new tide gauge or mareograph was installed in Isla del Coco, Costa Rica with the purpose of alerting park rangers, researches, volunteers and tourists about changes in sea level and the formation of tsunamis. “If we have information on how big is the tsunami on its arrival to the Island, then we can estimate how big it will be in Central and South America”, explained Silvia Chacon, oceanogr...