Why Cóbano
Why now
Why this matters
WHERE CONSERVATION BEGAN
Costa Rica's first protected area. Costa Rica's first biological corridor.
In 1963, Reserva Natural Absoluta Cabo Blanco became Costa Rica's first protected area - the culmination of efforts by Olof Wessberg and Karen Mogensen, who arrived on the Nicoya Peninsula from Scandinavia and raised funds to purchase and protect the land at the tip of the peninsula. Their act seeded a national conservation movement that would eventually protect over 27% of Costa Rica's land area.
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The Corredor Biológico Peninsular, established in 1998, became Costa Rica's first biological corridor - predating the national biological corridor programme by eight years.
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Both achievements are real. The conservation infrastructure exists. The intent has always been right. What has changed is our ability to measure, at fine scale, whether the corridor is functioning - and for whom.
The corridor exists because people fought for it. What exists now is the science to understand it at an unprecedented resolution.
THE LANDSCAPE
The forest came back
By the 1980s, widespread ranching had reduced forest cover across the Cóbano, Lepanto and Paquera peninsula to around 40%. What followed was a genuine recovery, driven by national payment for ecosystem services schemes, protected area establishment, and natural regeneration. Forest cover now stands at approximately 52% across the peninsula. That recovery is real, and it matters.
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But forest cover and ecological function are not the same thing. A recovered forest canopy does not automatically mean a recovered wildlife community. Whether the species that disappeared during the clearance era have returned with the trees - at what densities, in which areas, with what connectivity between populations - is, for most species, undocumented at the rigour required to inform conservation action.
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Establishing those baselines is one of the core purposes of this project. For some species, the answer is unfortunately already known.
THE THREATS
Three interlocking pressures
THREAT 01
Rapid urban expansion into high-connectivity land
Development pressure in Cóbano is accelerating. High-connectivity land - the parcels that matter most for wildlife movement between protected areas - is being sold and built on without adequate prior spatial planning that accounts for biological value. Our goal is to ensure that connectivity evidence is available to and usable by the people making spatial planning decisions in the district.
THREAT 02
Linear infrastructure breaking structural connectivity
Roads and fencing fragment movement corridors at key junctions - and targeted modifications at the right locations can significantly improve permeability for the species that need it most. Guild-specific analysis identifies where targeted modifications - crossing structures, fence design changes, roadside reforestation - would deliver the greatest connectivity benefit.
THREAT 03
A network losing ground faster than existing mechanisms can reverse
Costa Rica's national payment for ecosystem services framework - FONAFIFO - is one of the most successful conservation financing mechanisms in the tropics, and in large part responsible for the peninsula's forest recovery.
The opportunity in Cóbano is to understand what landowners in priority areas would actually need from a conservation scheme - and to build something that reflects that from the ground up. The families who have managed this landscape for generations hold the knowledge of what works here. The starting point is that knowledge.
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WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY LOST
Four species. Gone within living memory.
Their loss is documented in the historical record of Cabo Blanco and the surrounding peninsula. Each represents not just an absent animal, but a missing ecological function.
Jaguar
Panthera onca (Linnaeus, 1758)
Apex predator. Regulator of prey
populations and trophic structure.
Baird's Tapir
Tapirus bairdii (Gill, 1865)
Central America's largest land mammal. Critical seed disperser.
White-lipped peccary
Tayassu pecari (Link, 1795)
Ecosystem engineer. Forest floor structure and nutrient cycling.
© Smithsonian's National Zoo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Geoffroy´s spider monkey
Ateles geoffroyi (Kuhl, 1820)
Canopy frugivore. Seed disperser for large-fruited forest species.
Source: Timm, R.M. et al. 2009. Mammals of Cabo Blanco. Forest Ecology and Management, 258: 997–1013.
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