We are privileged to be sharing an open letter in defense of Costa Rica’s national park system. It is authored by three of the most influential people in the country in terms of their extraordinary individual contributions to the establishment of the park system. We already introduced you to Alvaro Ugalde and Mario Boza in an earlier blog posting. The third signatory, Karen Olsen Beck de Figueres, is the Former First Lady of Costa Rica and a living treasure.
We want you to voice your support on behalf of Las Baulas National Park by contacting Senora Hannia M. Duran in the Legislative Assembly: hduran@asamblea.go.cr.
“Honorable Members of Congress:
Very respectfully but vehemently, we request you NOT to contribute, with your vote, to the extinction of the leatherback sea turtles of the Eastern Pacific, and to discredit the country´s leadership in conservation.
We plead with you to reject project No. 17383 for the following reasons:
IN SUPPORT OF THE NATURAL HERITAGE OF THE COSTA RICAN PEOPLE AND ALL HUMANITY
The international prestige that Costa Rica enjoys globally as a leader in conservation is on the verge of collapse. Our reputation, as a country in peace with nature, will be hopelessly damaged if we deny our international commitment with nature. Consequently, it will gravely affect our principal economic activity: tourism.
If we permit the precedent of reducing and downgrading a national park, we will stand at the threshold of the collapse of the entire system of national parks, allowing our environment to undergo further deterioration.
PROJECT LAW No. 17383 PRESENTED BY THE GOVERNMENT WILL DISMEMBER THE MARINE NATIONAL PARK LAS BAULAS DE GUANACASTE
I
The destruction of the Planet and the extinction of its waters, its flora and fauna, and all its marine resources, is one of the most profound and saddest crisis in the history of mankind. This imbalance threatens the viability of our own existence.
More than half of all the species of plants and animals surviving, in our planet today, do so in the sanctuaries of national parks and equivalent reserves worldwide. Aware of this situation, Costa Rica initiated the development of a national park system beginning in 1970. For the last 40 years, this commitment has been maintained steadfast until this threat has arisen.
Nine years ago the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), declared the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), as threatened with extinction throughout the entire Planet.
In the American Pacific, the population of adults and sub-adults of this species, passed from 91,000 in 1980 to only 3,000 at present. Globally, this represents only 2% of its original population.
These turtles have lived for more than 110 million years. Survivors of the extinction of the dinosaurs, they may become victims of the current mass extinctions by humans of plants and animals. If Project No. 17383 is approved, Costa Rica will be contributing directly to the extinction of this specie.
II
The National Marine Park Las Baulas was established by Decree No. 20518-Mirenem in 1991, and by law No 7524 in 1995. It has an exceptional global value because it remains the most important nesting site in the whole Pacific Ocean for the leatherback sea turtle. These turtles nest in Playa Grande, Ventanas and Langosta.
It protects the San Francisco, Ventanas and Tamarindo mangroves, and also the El Morro Mountain, the site of unique botanical value, which must remain under absolute protection of the State.
III
On May 14th, the Executive Branch presented before the Legislative Assembly Project No. 17383 entitled, “Law for the Rectification of the Limits of the Marine National Park Las Baulas and the Creation of the Mixed Property Wildlife Refuge Las Baulas.”
If approved, this project would completely dismember the actual Marine National Park Las Baulas, even though there exist 19 laws, including international treaties and Article 50 of the Political Constitution, which mandate Costa Rica to protect its environment and its national parks so they will continue to constitute the Natural Patrimony of the State.
Project No. 17383 is a grave error. The international community will be outraged that “in Costa Rica the process has begun to dismantle the conservation work of the last four decades.”
In presenting this project, the Government proposes to the Congress the reduction of a national park, segregating its largest land mass and transforming it into a mixed public-private property wildlife refuge (a lower category), and authorizing within the lands which are part of the national park today, all kinds of developments, which will provoke the total extinction of the colony of nesting leatherback sea turtles.
Proof of this imminent disaster is the situation that we have in the wildlife refuges in the country. Not so in the national parks.
IV
This Project will:
1. Reduce the park by segregating the totality of Cerro El Morro, Cerro Ventanas and Isla Verde. It would further reduce to only 50 meters of beach the strip of land which is today 125 meters in the total extension of the three beaches, which is scientifically insufficient to protect the turtles during their nesting process.
2. It would eliminate the only authority which the protected areas must have. In this case, other institutions such as the Municipality of Santa Cruz, Institute of Tourism (ICT), the Ministry of Housing and the groups of landowners, would assume jurisdiction which in fact belongs exclusively to the Park Service.
3. It would ridicule the compliance of the resolutions of the Constitutional Court obligating the State to nationalize the lands of the Marine National Park Las Baulas.
4. It would allow, for the first time in history, within a national park, to construct “one-family residences, multifamily residences, both individual or in condominium; tourist recreational residences, recreational installations, tourist developments, including ecotourism; and other public and private infrastructure designed for public services.”
These developments will produce an intense illumination and an uncontrollable access of people to the park, as well as vehicles and domestic animals, all having a negative impact on the nesting process of the turtles.
Although the project pretends to justify the opposite, its articles and our experience, indicate that this area would be downgraded from a National Park to become just one more common beach.
5. It would reduce even more the present scant availability of drinking water that now supplies the small neighboring communities, giving way for the new massive developments.
6. It would contaminate underground water sources, which are of extreme vulnerability due the proximity of the aquifers to the surface.
Technical evaluations of the National Service of Underground Water Sources (SENARA) have determined the impossibility of constructing infrastructure on this area and its neighboring land.
V
With respect to land prices:
The Project justifies the Park´s dismemberment arguing the lack of budget resources. This is the same argument that has been repeated each time that a national park has been created during the last forty years. In spite of this reasoning, Costa Rica has been able to acquire approximately 80% of the lands that today form the National Parks System.
Much has been said about the cost that this would represent for the State to continue with the process of nationalization of the Park. In this respect, we express the following:
1. Some people have publicly affirmed that the expropriations would have an exorbitant total cost between 500 and 700 million dollars. False!
2. These calculations were realized on an average price per square meter of $850, based on only five of the highest appraisals by juridical appraisers of land, located in high value zones as Flamingo and Tamarindo.
It is important to emphasize that another juridical appraiser established a value of $13 per square meter, while still a third appraiser valued at $0 per square meter in the North of Playa Grande, also within the National Park.
3. In 2008, the study titled “Economic considerations for the expropriation process in Playa Grande, in Guanacaste Marine National Park Las Baulas”, analyzed 121 coastal lots of land with similar characteristics, and developed a model of prices using the same criteria.
4. The result of the study indicates that a typical lot in Baulas Park would have an average expropriation price of $131 per square meter.
Based on these estimates, the total maximum cost calculated would be $40 million to acquire the coastal lots included in Playas Grande, Ventanas and Carbón.
However, this estimate does not consider the real estate crisis, nor the negative effect on prices resulting from the limitations of the use of hydrological resources, nor the resolutions of the Constitutional Court, which has demanded the continuation of the land expropriations.
Neither does it consider the fact that some of the “titled” properties include mangroves, which according to the law must remain as public lands in perpetuity, a situation we consider very critical that must be studied by the Attorney General´s Office.
VI
These arguments, regarding the final value of properties to undergo expropriation in newly created national parks, have been the norm in the majority of established national parks during the last 40 years.
What has really enabled the purchase and consolidation of national parks, has been the continued real and firm commitment to conservation on the part of all former governments, as well as the important collaboration of the international community.
Why not apply the same strategy to the park that protects the Leatherback Turtles?
It is of utmost importance for each Costa Rican to feel that this cause is HER or HIS cause. The segregation of a national park deprives its citizens of part of their natural heritage, and replaces it with harmful and negative developments.
Far from the pretension to eliminate national parks, Costa Rica should be fostering the creation of new protected areas, especially coastal-marine parks, since the majority of fisheries and all of the marine resources of the country and the Planet, are being destroyed and are on the verge of extinction because of the attitudes and actions of human beings.
Our duty, and that of all Costa Ricans, is to protect the national parks, because they represent the heritage belonging to all us, but especially to our descendants and their descendants.
Now is the time to question if we Costa Ricans really want to continue to have national parks or are willing to allow them to be destroyed!
Honorable Members of Congress: we request you to reject Project No. 17383.
Respectfully,
Collaborators with the National Parks of Costa Rica since 1970
Karen Olsen Beck de Figueres
Alvaro Ugalde Víquez
Mario A. Boza Loria
July 2009
Posted by admin on Wed, Jul 15, 2009
Filed Under | Conservation and Biodiversity, Eco Blog