Balance of Tourism, Ecology Threatened in Costa Rica
By Arthur Frommer

More than most other destinations, the small, peaceful Central American nation of Costa Rica has built its travel reputation on protecting rain forests, volcanoes and gorgeous nature preserves. Yet a controversy over one of its premier rain forests -- mountainous Monteverde in the north -- shows how difficult it can be to balance the desire for tourism with a regard for ecology.

Nearly 5,000 feet high and 4 miles east of Santa Elena, Monteverde's main claim to fame is its unspoiled Cloud Forest Reserve. Literally in the clouds much of the time, its humidity gives rise to towering flora and diverse fauna such as sloths, howler monkeys and the quetzal, a blue-green bird once famously worshiped by ancient Mesoamerican cultures.

Growing up around this natural phenomenon 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 famous "canopy tours, 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 in balance with nature is being 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 -- far more than needed for irrigation.

The suspicion that they are a front for a large resort is 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 within Costa Rica and internationally. The incident demonstrates how "sustainable tourism" is not always so easy to sustain in the face of greed and shortsightedness.