Please send a letter now to save jaguars
Posted by jaguar1 on February 18, 2008
Alvaro Ugalde, the father of Costa Rican Conservation is asking us to send letters to the Costa Rican President concerning the rapid resort development affecting endangered species, including Jaguars.
Click here to read the letter from Alvaro Ugalde.
On my trip to Costa Rica last year, I saw the alarming speed with which development is taking place in the northern province of Guanacaste. The Osa, in the south, has been spared this fate, but not for long. While The Nature Conservancy and other groups have been working to create a biological corridor between the Piedras Blancas and Corcovado Parks, speculators and developers have been moving in to buy up crucial lands needed for this effort.
These new developments outlined in Alvaro’s letter are taking place within the biological corridor and represent the worst nightmare of activists working to save the fragile populations of rare species which include Jaguars, Tapirs, other wild cats, four species of monkeys, Scarlet Macaws and many more.
The Osa is one of the most important reservoirs of biodiversity. Any development projects here destroy more rare species than almost anywhere on earth. Future Jaguar is dedicated to supporting conservation in Osa and the groups and individuals working there. We are also interested in working with those who are buying land and building vacation and retirement homes in Central America, to harness their good intentions and help them do the right thing by the wildlife, by managing and enhancing their land for the benefit of rare species.
To find out more click here and sign up to receive information, or visit www.futurejaguar.org
to learn more and get involved.
Click here to read the letter from Alvaro Ugalde.
Copy and paste this link into an email to your friends:
http://futurejaguar.wordpress.com/Please-send-a-letter-now-to-save-Jaguars
Click here to read more from Alvaro Ugalde on the destruction taking place in Osa Peninsula:
Jean E. Rosenfeld said
Dear President Arias,
I am so proud to be associated with Costa Rica, a lovely country that I admire more than any other. I just returned from visiting my friends whom I worked with 43 years ago in Acosta (Congrejal)to develop projects in community development. The oldest active member of that community is now ninety years old. I just met the great-grandchildren of my friends in Aserri. I came to Costa Rica before it became famous for eco-tourism, before the parks, before you, sir, won the Nobel Prize for Peace, as a Peace Corps volunteer with Costa Rica III project.
Now I am appealing to you to save the Osa peninsula wildlife by preserving it from the kind of development that will bisect animal corridors and pollute wetlands. As my husband and I flew out of Costa Rica a few weeks ago, we watched the landscape of Central America unfold below us. So much interdependent biodiversity of our continent has been lost. The most destructive impact is that caused by running roads into sensitive ecological sites, because, unchecked by legislation and enforcement, roads bring a heavy footprint of development from which species never recover.
There is still so much to protect in Costa Rica and Panama and so much to preserve for future generations. The life of our species depends upon sustainable ecological maintenance. While I applaud sensible development and delight in the improvement in Costa Rican’s lives since 1965, I fear that societal infrastructure and legislative enforcement is losing pace with unsustainable development. Please preserve the Osa Peninsula and set it aside as a sacred remnant of the land God gave us as our Eden to sustain with good stewardship.
Thank-you so very much for all you have contributed to your beautiful country and wonderful people and to all of us on earth who hold Costa Rica up as an example of what a humane and rational society can accomplish.
Jean E. Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
Pacific Palisades, CA