Much OTS activity has a direct bearing on conservation and the field of conservation biology, both in terms of investigating ecosystem structure and function and applying conservation principles in teaching OTS field courses. With the environmental crisis in the tropics, there are compelling reasons for making OTS expertise and data available to those actively working to preserve the rapidly dwindling forests. OTS also works directly with local people and the Costa Rican government to establish buffer zone areas in association with OTS field stations.

	Conservation at La Selva
	Conservation at Las Cruces

Conservation at La Selva
Shortly after Braulio Carrillo National Park was established by presidential decree in 1976, interest grow to protect La Selva's environment by extending the park boundaries to include "complete watersheds of major streams draining the property." The seeds of this idea led to another presidential decree in 1982 declaring the Zona Protectora(ZP) La Selva and connecting it with the La Selva field station on the north and the Reserva Forestal and Braulio Carrillo National Park on the south. Subsequent efforts by OTS, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the Costa Rican National Parks Foundations raised over two million dollars to purchase the private land holdings in the ZP. The combined protected area to La Selva's south now encompasses 44,000 hectares, but the ZP per se was a narrow corridor of 6,000 hectares defined by the Río Peje on the west and the Río Guácimo to the east.

The narrow width of the ZP corridor, approximately half mile at the narrowest point, is questioned whether or not it is wide enough to provide an effective biological corridor. In 1990 a plan was approved by the Costa Rican government to purchase forest on the eastern side of the corridor for inclusion in the park. Over the last several years OTS has raised funds to double the width of the corridor by another 1,700 hectares. Efforts underway by FUNDECOR (Foundation for the Development of the Central Volcanic Mountain Range) to work with local farmers in the reforestation of degraded pastures complements the efforts of the National Park Service and OTS to stabilize these unique mountain ecosystems, that range in elevation from 30 meters at La Selva to 2,900 meters on the upper slopes of Volcán Barva, encompassing four life zones, perhaps 700 species of trees, and 80% of Costa Rica's land bird species.

For more details, see
Pringle, C. M. 1988. History of conservation efforts and initial exploration of the lower extension of Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo, Costa Rica, 225-41. In Tropical Rainforests: Diversity and Conservation, eds. F. Almeda and C. M. Pringle. San Francisco: Calif. Academy of Sciences and AAAS.

Conservation at Las Cruces
The Las Cruces Biological Station is situated near the town of San Vito de Java, province of Coto Brus, in southern Costa Rica near the Panamanian border. This premontane rain forest area was colonized by Italian immigrants in 1953, and over many years has been converted gradually into a major coffee-growing region. Extensive forest plots were cleared over the hilly terrain, but many forest patches were left intact at the intersects of coffee plantations and degraded pastures, and some forest ecosystems remain intact along the inaccessible mountain ridges. Along Cerro Zapote to the west and south of Las Cruces, pasture with forest patches of varying size and connectedness extend between the 200-hectare forest reserve at the station and the 7,000-hectare Guaymi Indian Reserve, some 12 kilometers along the ridgetop road.

This ridgetop area, designated here as the Coto Brus Corridor, has been identified by a number of scientists to be particularly suitable for studying a wide range of conservation biology and sustainable land-use issues. For this reason OTS is committed to the acquisition and development of baseline information, including GIS coverage, and appropriate infrastructure to assist researchers establish and maintain large-scale, long-term studies in the area, using Las Cruces as the base of operation.

For additional information, contact