The Bosque Lluvioso
Río Costa Rica Project
A Rainforest Preserve,
Environmental Education Center
and Exploratory
Yan Post
Golden Toad
Monteverde Cloud Forest
Thought to be extinct
The Pax Natura Foundation in Partnership with The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio)
Pax Natura Foundation
Board of Trustees
Trustees
Co-Chairs
“Despite their extraordinary richness,
tropical rain forests are among the most
fragile of all habitats.”
– E.O. Wilson
D r. Oscar Arias Sanchez
Honorary Chair
1987 Nobel Peace Prize
Former President of Costa Rica
D r. Jane Goodall
Primatologist
Founder, The Jane Goodall Institute
International Board of Advisors
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
1984 Nobel Peace Prize
Cape Town, South Africa
Trustees
Aung San Suu Kyi
1991 Nobel Peace Prize
Burma
His Royal Highness
Alfred, Prince of Prussia
Trent Alvey
President, Trent Alvey Design
Doug Anderson
President, Union Pointe Construction
Ana Baez, MA
President, Conservation-Consultores, Costa Rica
Wm. Hugh Bollinger, Ph.D.
Conservation Biologist and President, Pondaray
Deen Chatterjee, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah
William Connelly, AIA
Architect and Founding Partner
Bosque Lluvioso and Pax Natura Foundations
Forrest Cuch
Executive Director, Utah Division of Indian Affairs
Dinah Davidson, Ph.D.
Professor of Biology and Ecology, University of Utah
Pax Natura Foundation
To contact us
Steve Estes
Web Master
Carlos Jimenez Freer
President, Xcel, Costa Rica
Sr. Federico Gutierrez
Co-Executive Director, Pax Natura Foundation
Phyllis B. Hockett
Co-Executive Director, Pax Natura Foundation
The Pax Natura Foundation or
The Bosque Lluvioso Project
P.O. Box 520022
Salt Lake City, Utah 84152-0022
(801) 463-4675
[email protected]
www.rainforest-costarica.com
www.paxNatura.org
Susie Hulet
Marketing and Finance
Alicia Kazimir, MS
Educator
Danielle Lin
Host, The Danielle Lin Show, U.S.A.
Rod Mast
Vice President, Conservation International
Jeff Middleton
Computer Consultant
Federico Muñoz
Biologist and Naturalist, Costa Rica
Primara Dama Leila de Pacheco
First Lady of Costa Rica
Jerry Robinson, AIA
Architect and Founding Partner,
Bosque Lluvioso and Pax Natura Foundations
Dennis Sizemore, MA
Founder, Round River Conservation
Somgya Titus
Real Estate Finance
Randall Tolpinrud, MA
President and Founding Director,
Bosque Lluvioso and Pax Natura Foundations
Brooke Williams
Author and Environmentalist
D r. Edward O. Wilson
Pellegrino University Research Professor of Biology,
Harvard University
“The Atlantic coastal forest of Brazil which so
enchanted the young Darwin upon his arrival
in 1832 is 99% gone.”
– E.O. Wilson
Pax Natura – Peace with Nature
Peace
With Nature
A global reformation is steadily
growing. In wealthy and impoverished
nations alike, private citizens, corporations,
governments and non-governmental
organizations are forming partnerships and
protecting millions of acres of land.
“A typical American breakfast of cornflakes, bananas, sugar, coffee,
orange juice, hot chocolate and hash brown potatoes is based entirely
on tropical plant products.”
– Mary J. Plotkin
Through the preservation of these lands, these
partners are transcending the traditional
boundaries of single countries and governments in
order to honor a more encompassing, and higher,
natural law that binds all living communities
together. They wish to preserve critical regional
habitats so that the cornucopia of species that live
there will thrive. They wish to preserve the largely
undiscovered knowledge related to science,
medicine and other fields that resides in those
species and biosystems. And, they wish to
collaboratively safeguard the flow of materials,
energy and information from the ecosystems that
silently support daily human existence.
These partners search for solutions to improve
the lives of humans living under marginal
conditions, without damaging the natural
resource base. They recognize that their
collective decisions may powerfully influence
whether the myriad species existing on the planet
today will survive.
Pax Natura – Peace with Nature
The Pax Natura Foundation’s Bosque
Lluvioso Río Costa Rica Project is an exemplar
of the reformation occurring throughout the
world. The Project began in 1996 when three
United States citizens from Utah, during a visit
to Costa Rica, recognized the urgent need to
preserve a particular 448-acre parcel of rain
forest. Mr. Randall Tolpinrud, Mr. Will Connelly,
and Mr. Jerry Robinson purchased the land, then
deeded it back to the Costa Rican nongovernmental organization Instituto Nácional de
Biodiversidad (INBio) – the entity commissioned
by the Costa Rican Government to establish the
country’s biodiversity inventory. It is from this
genesis of small-scale preservation that the
Project grew to include the goals of scientific
research, environmental education, and rain
forest restoration.
It is fitting that this important project rests in
the country of Costa Rica – a country
unparalleled in natural beauty and enlightened
leadership. It is a country small in size that, by
example, wields a large circle of influence. In the
words of Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco
during a May, 2002 presentation in Madrid, Spain
to eleven of the world’s government leaders:
“It is necessary to reiterate that the real gold and
the real petroleum of the future will be water and
oxygen; without which there simply won’t be life.
This is why in my government we are going to
take a transcendental step: next to the social and
economic guarantees, we are going to incorporate a
chapter on environmental guarantees in our
Political Constitution.”
Through the collaborative efforts of the Costa
Rican government, INBio, The Jane Goodall
Institute and a distinguished international Board
of Trustees, the Pax Natura Foundation envisions
a global model of rain forest preservation and
restoration. It is our fundamental belief that this
model, based on an interactive education
Exploratory, will lead to a greater understanding
of how the human community may live in
balance with the natural world. We invite you to
join us in this work.
The Bosque Lluvioso Project
Preservation
Preservation
When complete, the Bosque Lluvioso Project will preserve thousands
of acres of rain forest in Costa Rica.
The Bosque Lluvioso Project is establishing
a self-sustaining program to effectively protect,
manage and restore the rich natural resources
of this property and contingent land tracts.
Together this preserve will create a link in the
Meso-American Biological Corridor and an
ecological buffer zone contiguous to the Braulio
Carrillo National Park to help protect the
national park from encroachment and degradation. This important component of a far larger
buffer zone around primary rain forest habitat
will support important research, economic and
educational activities while interior sections of
the rain forest will remain undisturbed.
Education and Research
Education
and Research
The Bosque Lluvioso Project, in conjunction
with the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad
(INBio), will provide research opportunities in
biodiversity, forest restoration technology and
human-environment interaction to students
throughout the world.
INBio is a non-governmental organization
commissioned by the Costa Rican government to
establish the biodiversity inventory for Costa
The Bosque Lluvioso Project
Rica. As part of INBio’s mission, Dr. Rodrigo
Gamez, President of INBio, leads international
efforts to identify, name and organize species.
INBio generates knowledge of biodiversity
through inventory, information management,
social outreach and conservation programs.
INBio is unique in its targeted efforts to communicate and promote utilization of the knowledge
it generates. INBio seeks to contribute to the
development of Costa Rican society from spiritual, social and economic perspectives, in
harmony with nature.
The INBio program is the model for a new
international biodiversity inventory program as
announced recently by Dr. Edward O. Wilson,
Pelligrino University Research Professor at
Harvard University and Trustee of the Pax
Natura Foundation.
The Bosque Lluvioso Project, in partnership with
INBio, will create a uniquely designed educational
Exploratory to increase environmental literacy.
Situated on 30 acres of one of the most beautiful natural habitats remaining on earth, the
Exploratory will provide a model environmental
education center demonstrating state-of-the-art
sustainable design principles. The Exploratory
will include a series of interactive pavilions and
outdoor learning environments specifically
designed to demonstrate ecological principles
and best practices within and across a variety of
professional disciplines.
The Exploratory will provide opportunities for
environmental education through a hands-on,
creative, interactive process of inquiry.
• The Bosque Lluvioso Academy.
The Academy will serve students and
researchers from colleges and universities
around the world through jointly accredited
programs in science, health care, education,
business, architecture, and arts and humanities.
In addition to discipline-focused curricula, the
Academy will include programs such as the
Intercultural Center for Research in Education
(INCRE), biological education programs
patterned after INBio’s bioliteracy initiative,
and The Jane Goodall Institute’s Roots &
Shoots Program.
Because of the importance of the Jane Goodall
Institute’s Roots and Shoots program, a pavilion
has been dedicated exclusively for its use at the
Exploratory. The mission is to foster respect
and compassion for all living things, to promote
understanding of all cultures and beliefs and to
inspire each individual to take action to make
the world a better place for the environment,
animals and the human community.
• The Ecotourism program.
The ecotourism program will help generate
on-site jobs, program-related employment
and local services from the surrounding
community. Through these activities the
exploratory will communicate to the local
community a clear sense of the economic
value of the preserved status of the land.
Restoration
Restoration
Restoration
The Bosque Lluvioso Project will demonstrate methods for
restoration of degraded tropical forests.
In keeping with current notions of “best
practices” regarding forest restoration, the
Bosque LLuvioso Project seeks to restore tropical rain forests in several ways. First, in a far
reaching watershed restoration strategy, the
Bosque will acquire additional acres of contingent land tracts thereby expanding and protecting an important extension of biological corridors in Central America. These lands represent a
Restoration
Balance
Balance
patchwork of varying degrees of forest degradation and are natural laboratories for studying
ecological succession of tropical rain forests and
restoration technologies. The forest corridors are
essential to the long-term preservation of biodiversity for countless plant, animal, amphibian
and insect species in the Western Hemisphere.
Second, forest restoration will increase the
share of rain forest that will be allotted for watershed protection rather than utilization, thus
ensuring a more stable hydrologic balance
throughout the Bosque landscape and to communities downstream. A portion of secondary rain
forest lands will be perpetually protected and
available for studies of ecological succession and
restoration techniques. As part of the overall strategy to “restart rainforests”, degraded portions of
the acquired landscapes will be made available for
proper ecological succession research and
demonstration projects in forest restoration technologies, multi-cropping / forest farming techniques, sustainable agriculture, food and medicinal crop research and ecotourism education. The
technologies of tropical forest restoration will
have wide application well beyond the boundaries
of the Bosque project. The practical application of
the research will be incorporated in the interactive
education programs of the Exploratory pavilions.
The Bosque Lluvioso Exploratory and allied
programs will help us achieve and demonstrate
balance between the natural environment and
human affairs.
In the long run, the best way to protect the rain
forest’s vital natural ecosystems is by demonstrating
their intrinsic value. The Bosque Lluvioso project
will seek to do this through an interactive combination of accumulated knowledge and direct experience. The design of buildings and features of the
Exploratory will incorporate natural resource
conservation technologies. All infrastructure will
showcase renewable energy systems and non-toxic,
renewable and resource-efficient building materials.
Design elements will make visible and apparent to
all students and visitors of the Exploratory how to
successfully and practically apply self-sustaining
technologies. A primary focus of the Exploratory is
to research and demonstrate cost-effective green
building practices and an array of related economic
self-sufficiency principles.
Most importantly, the Exploratory at the Bosque
Lluvioso will showcase the Exploratory itself. Those
who spend the time can learn from its design and
will begin to remember that humankind is part of
and not apart from nature’s ecosystems.
Location
➢
The Bosque Lluvioso preserve is only one hour from San José
NICARAGUA
N
V. Rincón
Rinc n de la vieja
GUANACASTE
Liberia
Caribbean
Sea
V. Miravalles
Volc n Arenal
Volcán
1
NICOYA
PENINSULA
Po
V. Poás
Alajuela
Puntarenas
Gu piles
Guápiles
V. Barva
Heredia
San José
Jos
Pacific
Ocean
Bosque Lluvioso
V. Turrialoa
V. Irazú
Iraz
32
Lim
Limón
Cartago
Cerro Chirripo
National Parks
of
Costa Rica
2
OSA
PENIN.
Parklands & Refuges
PANAMA
Golfito
Letter from the President
Press Release
Press Release
“In the earlier mass
extinctions, …, most of
the plants survivied
though animal diversity
was severely reduced.
Now, for the first time,
plant diversity is
declining sharply.”
– E.O. Wilson
The Bosque Lluvioso
Río Costa Rica Project
A Rainforest Preserve,
Environmental Education Center
and Exploratory
The Pax Natura Foundation in Partnership with
The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio)