Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Conservation Value

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

The populations of the Squirrel Monkey (Mono Titi), White Face Monkeys (Mono Carablanca) and Howler Monkeys (Mono Congo). Mono Titi in Costa Rica (Saimiri oerstedii), in the Manuel Antonio area have become fragmented and more isolated with the combination of intense agricultural development in the area over the past half century as well as more recent tourism development in the area immediately surrounding the Manuel Antonio National Park. Both of these economic activities are extremely important in the area and the need to find sustainable solutions that allow their continued coexistence with the still vibrant natural communities living here must be found.

Effects of habitat fragmentation

Tourism, Costa Rica’s major economic driver is especially dependent on the natural environment and flagship species such as the Mono Titi. Despite sincere desires throughout a broad spectrum of society here, including government officials, tourism organizations and operators as well as local people and tourists, to successfully conserve the natural environment they not only depend on economically but connect with personally, achieving conservation goals is often difficult as competing interests clash. Among various factors causing this inefficient system of promoting growth and protecting the environment, the lack of useful and well-focused scientific information is major limiting factor.

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Scientific Research and Facilities

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

Eco Preservation Society's Primate Research Program in Manuel Antonio will provide the valuable information necessary to focus these reforestation efforts. It aims to collect important scientific information that will give local and national decision makers the knowledge they need to properly plan for the continued existence of these amazing creatures as well as allow for a healthy and sustainable local economy. Our study in the area in and around the Manuel Antonio National Park aims to generate information that can be used to protect the natural corridors and proper levels of biodiversity that sustain this emblematic and charismatic primate species as well as a multitude of other important wild species sharing this extremely biodiverse part of the world. We are planning to work through 4 main stages of scientific exploration, in a specific order, with the intention of developing a useful and well thought out plan to preserve both Manuel Antonio’s Mono Titi and its economic engine, working towards achieving environmental and social sustainability.

Research Goals

We envision working in the area in the long term, investigating new research questions as we begin to answer the first ones. This tiered process will allow us to have a solid base of information to inform each continuing stage. Our overall goals are explained briefly in the last two stages.

• Stage 1 - Consists of the identification of the different Squirrel Monkey populations currently present in the area, with a characterization of their habitat and as a final step carrying out a population-structure analysis.

• Stage 2 – Consists of an analysis of sub-populations and meta-populations 

• Stage 3 – Consists of an analysis of genetic viability and diversity

• Stage 4 – Working to improve habitat connectivity and genetic health within the various sub populations in the area. This activity will consist of partnerships with local landowners who are eager to participate in important conservation work, who see the value of working towards an overall more sustainable local eco-community. They will see the advantage of managing their land in a more sustainable way. This stage will also require a strong and productive partnership with the government, to effectively achieve conservation goals such as relocating individual animals within the various subpopulations to help achieve sufficient levels of genetic health.

• Stage 4b – Develop a series of inputs to be used in future land use and regional planning efforts, providing decision makers with the detailed and high resolution information they need to make informed decisions. This can consist of detailed habitat and corridor maps, indicating the most important areas to preserve in perpetuity to achieve long term self sustaining wildlife populations. It is important to note that this is not an effort to restrict and limit development, but instead an effort to allow development to occur in a smart, informed and sustainable way.

Eco Preservation Society has established a Wildlife Conservation Research Center in the heart of the Manuel Antonio area in order to facilitate our research programs. Researchers, Interns and Volunteers will live and work in the seventy-bed facility. Our center will serve as a hub for conservation activity throughout the Central Pacific Conservation Zone.

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Challenges to Overcome

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

The challanges facing this project are similar to those facing many reforestation and habitat restoration projects around the world. The main limiting factor is always the ability to find sufficient resources, both financial and human capital. Large scale reforestation and habitat restoration projects are extremely expensive. They are also time and labor intensive. Part of the problem is that results take many years to play out, and maintaining donor interest is more difficult due to this lag. Finding sufficient manual labor to carry out these activities can also be difficult. As well, in a country like Costa Rica bureaucratic inertia is a major limiting factor. Getting the proper institutional support to work on protected land owned by the government is not always as easy as one would imagine it to be.

In these difficult cases finding and creating the proper partnerships is crucial.

Manuel Antonio / Playa el Rey - Project Description

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

Eco Preservation Society's restoration and reforestation project in and around Manuel Antonio National Park involve several separate, but coordinated efforts. The overall objective of this work is to recreate the necessary biological corridors, reconnecting stranded wild species in the National Park with existing populations and habitat further inland and further south. Species such at the Squirrel Monkey find themselves isolated in the remaining habitat fragments in and immediately around the National Park, a situation that places them in grave danger of extinction.  Reforestation efforts

The first major effort we will be carrying out related to this project is our Primate Research Program in Manuel Antonio, where over the course of several years we will study the three species of primate currently found in the area. This study will eventually give us the information we need to plan for biological corridors and long term conservation goals. Since primates are an umbrella species, these corridors and protected zones will benefit not only primates but many other, lesser known, wild species inhabiting the area.

Reforestation in the area is another critical component to creating the biological corridors necessary to reconnect the Manuel Antonio National Park and surrounding forests further inland. Replanting the Rainforests will work at the beautiful Playa El Rey beach, which has been severely modified in the past decades, to restore its natural vegetation and ecosystem services. In addition the Eco Preservation Society will work with private land owners to create biological corridors through their lands, as working purely on government controlled lands is not enough to accomplish all the connectivity goals needed to save these threatened wild species.

Environmental education programs are also a vital component of this overall project and educational opportunities will be designed into all of our projects, including both the Primate Research Program and our reforestation and habitat restoration work.

Reforestation as a tool for environmental education