El Rey Beach Reforestation

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Project Update Blog

• Description of Area
• Conservation Value
• Scientific Research and Facilities
• Challenges to Overcome
• Project Description
• Partners
• Get Connected
• Project Update Blog

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Saving Mono Titi

• Description of Area
• Conservation Value
• Scientific Research and Facilities
• Challenges to Overcome
• Project Description
• Partners
• Get Connected
• Project Update Blog

Disappearing Habitat

Costa Rica's Mono Titi Squirrel MonkeyFifty years ago, the Pacific coast of Central America was a wild coastal jungle. The tiny Mono Titi monkey ranged freely from Panama through Costa Rica. Today, the Mono Titi is restricted to two small, disconnected scraps of habitat, Manuel Antonio National Park, north of Playa El Ray, and Corcovado National Park to the south. Every day, the Mono Titi's habitat diminishes, and so do the Mono Titi.

During the middle of the last century, Costa Rica emerged from third world impoverishment through a national agricultural development program. Devastating deforestation made way for alien crops like bananas, rice and cattle. Developers imported their visions of a tropical paradise by erecting modern resorts surrounded by coconut palms, also non-indigenous to Costa Rica and unsupportive to native wildlife.

Thus, the Mono Titi are left with nowhere to go. They are trapped in two small islands of habitat amidst an inhospitable landscape, no biological corridor connecting them and no hope for survival without substantial intervention.

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Description of Area

• Description of Area
• Conservation Value
• Scientific Research and Facilities
• Challenges to Overcome
• Project Description
• Partners
• Get Connected
• Project Update Blog

Manuel Antonio is one of Costa Rica's most popular tourist destinations. The protected areas of Manuel Antonio are the country's most visited National Park, as well as it's smallest. The intense agricultural development which has occurred here over the past several decades has left the park as a biological island, stranding its hundreds of tropical species, placing them in extreme danger of losing their remaining foothold in this extremely bio-diverse region. While recent tourism development has given these natural resources a social and economic value that Manuel Antonio has never before enjoyed, this same development is also putting many species at risk.

Playa El Rey is the most recent addition to the Manuel Antonio National Park, having been incorporated into the protected area 6 years ago. It is a narrow stretch of beach 14 kilometers long. It has been severly modified, with much of its orginal forerst replaced by Cocount Palms, a non-native and invasive species. It's mangroves have also been affected where rice plantations have been planted. Mangroves are one of the most important ecosystems on earth, providing many other services for both land based and marine ecosystems. This beach is also important as a marine turtle nesting site. The reforestation efforts proposed here will provide benifit to these endangered species as well, as Coconut Palm Tree roots prevent proper nesting behaviour for female marine turtles.