SIGN UP FOR OUR By Wendy Anders
Costa Rica Reventazon Hydroelectric Plant
Costa Rican agencies are strengthening a biological corridor in southern Costa Rica critical to wildlife protection through increased forest-protection incentives for private landowners. The corridor is also known as the Jaguar Pass.
In the wake of the recently inaugurated Reventazón Hydroelectric Project that may affect animals who traverse the forests surrounding the damn, reported CRHoy.com, a Costa Rican Spanish digital media, the need to strengthen the corridor was identified.
The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and Forestry Financing Fund (FONAFIFO) have teamed up to provide environmental payments also known as ‘environmental services’ to landowners in an 804 hectare area at the end of the Reventazón reservoir in the Barbilla-Destierra region. The service payments are given to landowners who maintain their private land in a forested state, reported CRHoy.com.
The corridor connects the International Costa Rica-Panama La Amistad Park with Costa Rica’s Caribbean Conservation Area and its Central Volcanic Range to provide an expanded range for mammals such as jaguars, ocelots, armadillos, anteaters, three-toed sloths, coyotes, and tapirs as well as other species that roam the mountainous region.
ICE will match FONAFIFO’s environmental payments to landowners in the area in addition to donating around 34,000 trees for reforestation efforts. This gives landowners an added incentive to conserve their properties, the first time added incentives are used in environmental payments in Costa Rica.
ICE is also providing landowners with technical assistance in filing the environmental services application and will support additional reforestation by landowners in the area, said CRHoy.com.
The initiative involves an investment of US$1.6 million, and is part of ICE’s commitment to work in social and environmental harmony with its projects, in this specific case the recently inaugurated Reventazón Hydroelectric Project, said Gustavo Calvo, environmental manager and contract administrator for ICE, to CRHoy.com.
