​​Every community in Cóbano has a different relationship with this landscape.
All of them matter to its future.
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This page is for them.
CÓBANO
There is a pride in being Cóbaneño
It runs through the ranching families who were among the first to settle this peninsula - cut off from the mainland, building lives from the land, developing an identity that is distinct and rooted. It runs through the communities of the interior, through the people who chose this place and stayed, through anyone who has watched a puma cross a road at dusk and felt something shift in them.
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That pride is not sentimental. It is grounded in something real - this landscape is genuinely remarkable, and the people who live here know it better than anyone.
The question is not whether Cóbano's communities care about what happens to this place. They do. The question is whether that shared pride can become shared action.
We think it can. We think it already is.
COMMUNITY STRAND 01
The ranches came first
And they may be the key
In most parts of the world, the story of agriculture and biodiversity is a story of loss - one advancing as the other retreats. In Cóbano, the story is more complicated, and more interesting. The current ranching families of this district are those who have watched the forest come back from the brink. Their land holds much of what connects the protected areas of the peninsula - not because of a policy or a payment scheme, but because of how they have always managed it.
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That connection between land stewardship and corridor function is one worth naming explicitly - and building on. Soil health, erosion control, water retention, the long-term productivity of the land - these are ranching concerns as much as conservation concerns. The overlap between what healthy land means to a ranching family and what a functioning corridor needs is not incidental - it is the basis of a shared interest worth developing together.
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What we hope to build, through genuine conversation and community-led design, is a shared understanding of what is at stake and what is possible - for the land, for the wildlife, and for the families who have worked this landscape for generations. A payment scheme, if it comes, will emerge from those conversations- shaped by the people who know this land best.
As guardians of their lands, the ranching community will help define what conservation looks like in this district.
COMMUNITY STRAND 02
The roads that connect communities also fragment the wildlife
Cóbano's communities grew up around its roads. Those roads carry the daily life of the district - children to school, produce to market, families between towns. They are not going away, nor should they.
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But some of those roads pass through places that matter enormously to the wildlife of the peninsula. Places where a different fence design, a different road surface, a different habit around speed or lighting could make a significant difference to who can move through the landscape and who cannot.
Those who live along these roads have always been the forest’s closest observers. They know which animals pass through and when, which have disappeared and which have come back. Generations of proximity to this landscape have created a practical expertise that is essential to the wider picture.
It is that knowledge, combined with the spatial analysis, that makes targeted and lasting change achievable.
PLANNED APPROACH
→ Community conversations and structured workshops with road communities
→ Co-designed road and fencing changes with the people who use them daily
→ Localised speed reduction programmes designed by communities
COMMUITY STRAND 03
Divided, we protect fragments
Together, we restore a corridor
There are organisations in this district that have been protecting reserves, planting trees, rehabilitating and releasing wildlife, managing water catchments, and advocating for this landscape for years. Each knows its corner of Cóbano deeply. Each has built something real. The collective effort of those organisations is one of the reasons this landscape is in the condition it is today.
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What is harder to see from any single corner is how the pieces fit together across the whole. A reforestation programme delivers more in the parcels that matter most to corridor function. A rehabilitation and release programme delivers more when release sites have onward movement routes the connectivity science can identify. A water catchment project and a corridor conservation project are, in many cases, protecting the same forest for overlapping reasons.
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The spatial science we are building is available to every organisation working in this district - to help inform where effort is targeted, and to provide a shared evidence base that, when backed by a coalition of organisations with established presence across Cóbano, carries real weight in the planning decisions that will shape this landscape for decades.
The goal is to find the shared foundation - and build from there, together.
TOURISM & BUSINESS
The draw of the wild
People travel across the world to reach this corner of Costa Rica. They come for the jungle and the wildlife, but mostly for the feeling - increasingly rare - that something intact and wild is still possible. The scarlet macaw in the almond tree. The howler monkey at dawn. The quiet knowledge that a puma is out there, even if it stays unseen.
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​That experience is the bedrock of the local tourism economy, yet it is not self-sustaining. A landscape where wildlife populations quietly fragment and decline becomes a landscape where, one day, the thing people came for is no longer there - and nobody can say exactly when it changed.
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The hotels, tourism operators and businesses are conservation stakeholders by necessity. Their guests are already voting for a landscape that requires active stewardship to remain what it is.
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The link between a thriving corridor and a thriving tourism economy isn’t a conservation pitch or a marketing angle. It is the fundamental bottom line.
SMALL ACTIONS. CUMULATIVE IMPACT
Four things the tourism and business community
can do right now
Brief your guests
Tell arriving guests to slow down on roads near forest. It costs nothing. It keeps wildlife alive.
Switch the lights
Outdoor lighting near forest in wildlife-friendly wavelengths reduces disturbance significantly.
Tell the story
Guests who understand what they're visiting take more care of it. The corridor is a story worth telling.
Join the coalition
The businesses of Cóbano have a collective voice in planning and policy decisions. Use it.
"There is no version of conservation success in Cóbano that does not have the people of this district at the centre of it."
GET INVOLVED
​If you live here and you recognise this district in what we're describing - we'd like to hear from you. Whether you're a rancher, a resident, an NGO, or a business owner, we want to work with the people who know this land best.
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