Skirmish Exposes Frail Nature of Ecotourism
By Aurthur Frommer, King Features Syndicate

More than most other destinations, the small, peaceful Central American nation of Costa Rica has built its travel reputation on the sensitivity it has shown to protecting exuberant nature: rain forests, volcanoes and gorgeous nature preserves.

Yet a controversy over one of its premier rain forests (mountainous Monteverde in the northern zone) shows how difficult it can be to balance the desire for tourism with a regard for the untouched ecology of the area.

Nearly 5,000 feet up and four miles east of Santa Elena, Monteverde's main claim to fame is its unspoiled Cloud Forest Reserve, so high it's literally in the clouds much of the time.

The resulting humidity attracts a riot of towering flora and diverse fauna such as sloths, howler monkeys and the most famous denizen, the quetzal, a blue-green bird once worshiped by ancient Mesoamerican cultures.

Growing up around this is a relatively low-key tourism industry of small inns and hotels, restaurants and attractions (such as a coffee plantation, cheese factory, rafting and the canopy tours of Selvatura and three other local concerns -- on which you zip over the treetops on steel cables or walk among them on hanging bridges). These are run by locals, some foreign expatriates and descendants of American Quakers who moved here in the 1950s.

A gentlemen's agreement to keep such growth controlled and in balance with nature has recently been endangered by a group of entrepreneurial local farmers who, in late 2004, asked for permission to drain an unprecedented amount of precious water from the local reservoir -- an amount far above what is needed to irrigate their fields.

The suspicion has arisen that they are a front for an all-inclusive or other large resort -- bolstered by the fact that their environmental-impact report proved full of inconsistencies.

With both the community and nation now on alert, the danger seems to be receding, but it is not yet past. Residents are appealing for support from all quarters, both inside Costa Rica and internationally.

The incident demonstrates how ''sustainable tourism'' is not always so easy to sustain in the face of greed and shortsightedness.