Área de Conservación Guanacaste

The Área de Conservación Guanacaste was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999 and extended in 2004. It protects some 1,470 km² in north-western Costa Rica, in a continuous gradient running from the Pacific Ocean and its reefs to the summits of the Orosí, Rincón de la Vieja and Cacao volcanoes, and then down the Caribbean slope to lowland rainforest.

That altitudinal and climatic continuum, uncommon in Central America, allows species to move seasonally between belts and gives the whole an exceptional resilience. But its greater interest lies elsewhere: here the largest tropical dry forest restoration project in the world has been carried out. The dry forest of the Central American Pacific is one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet, reduced to minimal fragments by centuries of fire, cattle ranching and ploughing.

Since the 1980s, the project driven by the ecologist Daniel Janzen and by Costa Rican institutions has been buying up degraded cattle ranches, eliminating fire and invasive grasses, and letting the forest regenerate from the remaining fragments and from seed dispersal by wildlife. The result, after decades, is the recovery of tens of thousands of hectares and a model of ecological restoration studied worldwide, with strong involvement of local communities as parabiologists.