La Amistad

Declared in 1982 as Costa Rica's first and only binational park, shared with neighbouring Panama, La Amistad is the largest nature reserve in the whole of Central America, at over 570,000 hectares including its buffer zone. It protects an exceptional mosaic of habitats running from lowland rainforest up to high-mountain páramo — the northernmost páramo documented on the planet — whose peaks, isolated from one another over millennia, have favoured independent evolution and a very high degree of endemism. In 2021 the Naso people of Panama won a landmark Supreme Court ruling recognising their ancestral territory within the park, establishing joint management with the Panamanian government.