OTS and Pura Vida!

The national slogan of Costa Rica, Pura Vida! (Pure Life!), reflects perhaps the most telling reason that the Organization for Tropical Studies has found a natural home in the stunningly beautiful country, and a natural partnership with the University of Costa Rica.

Besides its biological stations, the OTS academic home has long been the University of Costa Rica, where fundraising and planning are underway for a new academic and research center building.

“We want to ‘come home,’ since we have had such extraordinarily good partnerships with the university,” says Hartshorn. “We want to strengthen those connections with the Costa Rican academic community even more.”
Already, many Costa Rican scientists and policy leaders serve on its governing boards and committees, as well as teach its courses. For example, the current Minister of the Environment, Carlos Manual Rodríguez, teaches courses in the Environmental Science and Policy Program.

Even at the grassroots level, the educated, ecologically aware local citizens of Costa Rica show a deep understanding and appreciation of the issues of tropical conservation.

Recalls OTS Executive Director Gary Hartshorn, “I remember very vividly, when we brought the Director of the Council on Environmental Quality down here some ten years ago for a short course. It was when the U. S. was exploring such complex, jargon-filled issues as carbon offsets, and joint implementation to protect tropical forests and enhance biodiversity.

“We proposed a town hall meeting with the local community just a few miles from La Selva, and the director expressed serious skepticism that local communities would be able to dialogue about these kinds of initiatives, let alone even know about them.

“And she and her fellow colleagues in the course were just absolutely blown away that this rural Costa Rican village knew about these kind of things.”
Hartshorn and his colleagues are especially proud that the OTS has involved Costa Ricans in its scientific and conservation efforts -- as “parabiologists” and “parataxonomists.”

“You don’t have to have a Ph. D. to help save biodiversity,” says Hartshorn. He cites, for example, the fact that a key person in the Arthropods of La Selva project < http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/ALAS/ALAS.html> is Ronald Vargas, who began as a member of the construction crew. Vargas’s interest and enthusiasm for classifying the multitude of insects prompted the scientists to help him learn to become a parataxonomist with deep knowledge of the field of insect taxonomy.

“Several years, ago, we had one local woman, Flor Cascante, who was a member of the cleaning crew, and every lunch break, she would bring her lunch over to spend it in ALAS -- asking questions and voluntarily helping them.” says Hartshorn. “So, when an opening came up on the ALAS staff, we hired her, and it’s been a great success story.”

Similarly, said Hartshorn, the long-term Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) project will depend heavily on Costa Rican technicians to gather data over its decades of operation. Thus, not only will they contribute to improving the scientific understanding of tropical rain forests, but also of their own country, as well as forging for themselves a career in science.