The Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) is 110,000 terrestrial hectares and 43,000 marine hectares of permanently conserved wild lands in northwestern Costa Rica. The mission of the ACG is both to conserve the biodiversity of these ecosystems and its cultural heritage, and to use it as a model of development which integrates the local community in the management of the area.
Our funding is specifically supporting the ACG's biological programme, which educates over 2,500 local school children from 51 schools. They are taken to the area to be taught about their natural habitat and the importance of protecting it, and the necessity of sustainable practices to protect the 235,000 species living in ACG, estimated to make up 65% of all species in Costa Rica.
A special tie with this project is that one of the plantations used by the ACG to teach students on the ecosystem also supplies fruit to innocent drinks.
The Area de Conservación Guanacaste has 20 years experience and is one of the eleven Areas of Conservation that make up the Sistema Nacional de Areas de Conservación (National System of Conservation Areas) of the Costa Rican government.
The area is made up of widely diverse ecosystems, from the Caribbean rain forest, to the driest and oldest zones of Costa Rica, which are more than 80 million years old.
Besides these, there is also a low altitude cloud forest, a dry forest in various stages of regeneration, mangroves and diverse costal and marine environments.
We supported the well established ACG Biological Education Programme in 2006 and have continued that funding.
This year the program is working with 2600 students in the 4th - 6th grades, from 51 poor rural schools in the communities surrounding ACG. It is an increase of 100 children from 2006 and continues to uses the four major ecosystems as living classrooms. It aims to transform the students' views of nature and the potential for the protected wildlands.
Objectives
More specifically, the innocent foundation funding has:
- Enabled the hiring of an additional field biologist teacher and three bus drivers (currently six fulltime field biologists and two bus drivers).
- Covered the associated operational costs – in such extreme conditions the buses need more maintenance than most vehicles and we found during 2006 that this was not factored in as much as it could have been - so it now has its own allocation.
- Allowed equal visitation of all classes to all four ecosystems, substantially increasing the quality of the programme.
You can read a little more about the workshops and what they cover below.
The Work
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The workshops are very practical and mean the students get proper tuition inside the rainforest as well as the class room. Introducing children to the importance and benefits of protecting biodiversity early is the best long term strategy for defending the area.
The workshops explain the dangers of forest fires and climate change, and the local impact of the worldwide fisheries crisis. Other workshops and ield trips include students' parents to help inform them about the development of the program.
Another important activity that our funds have supported is the 'biodiversity workshop.' It offers the most enthusiastic students the opportunity to spend three days at one of the four field stations and exchange experiences with children from the different ecosystems that make up the ACG.
2006 achievements
We were very pleased with the impact the project had in 2006. The main achievements include:
- Employment of a new teacher, which is especially exciting as he was a student in the programme, went on to university and then returned to join the organisation that inspired him.
- A number of workshops took place for school teachers and parents. Some of the parents have been on field trips to experience what their children were doing.
Basic maintenance to the four field stations that PEB has scattered throughout the ACG. Specifically they were able to give them a lick of badly needed paint. Tropical field stations are exposed to harsh conditions, and the ACG are very keen to keep them in a good condition so they'll last much longer. - Construction has started of a rustic classroom in the Sector Pailas, which one day can be turned into the ACGs fifth formal classroom. At Sector Pailas children have access to secondary volcanic activity, trails into humid forests as well as the cloud forest.
- A range of improvements to the vehicles.
www.acguanacaste.ac.cr