Introduction
In Western society, many believe that the human world is entirely mutually exclusive from the ecological world. After all, the concerns of humans are entirely different from the seemingly trivial or primitive concerns of animals, plants, and fungi, right? In reality, the interests of humans and non-human organisms are aligned. The human world and natural world deeply influence each other in ways that are not immediately obvious. Thus, paradigms separating humanity from nature are inaccurate; there is no explicit boundary separating the two. This has been made even more clear to me after spending 1 week in the La Selva biological research station located in northern Costa Rica. In this blog post, I will provide an overview of my first week in Costa Rica, and I will explain how this week has emphasized the interconnectivity between humans and nature.
Monday, May 23, 2022: getting settled
Soon after I arrived in Costa Rica on Monday, May 23, I experienced just how rich in wildlife Costa Rica is. As I moved my belongings out of the bus, I noticed the variety of insects, frogs, and other small critters sneaking around in the grass. I saw a python millipede scuttering about on the concrete path leading to the cabin I was staying in. Red and blue and green and black poison dart frogs, organisms I had only read about in books and online articles, were abundant 30 meters away from my room’s door. It was clear to me that Costa Rica must present organisms with conditions that support many more forms of life than my home in South Bend, Indiana. I began to wonder about what my relationship was to the tiny organisms outside.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022: biodiversity abound
I continued to be in awe at how beautiful Costa Rica’s wildlife is. After I ate breakfast, I attended a morning hike. My group circled around the laboratory and ventured 500 meters deep into the forest. I had an incredible sighting of leaf cutter ants. They marched in an organized line, carrying leaves back to their colony in order to cultivate fungi that the ants eat. Each of the organisms, the fungi, the ants, and the trees, needed each other for survival. I also had a memorable experience with hummingbirds which fluttered at lightning speed between narrow flowers. The flowers needed the hummingbirds, and the hummingbirds needed the flowers. Later that day, I was also able to go on a night hike. One notable moment was when my group noticed a curled up Fer de Lance snake about 10 meters away from us at the side of a concrete trail. The Fer de Lance is venomous and has many adaptations, including heat sensing pits and an acute sense of smell, that enables it to hunt at night. The Fer de Lance was a key organism keeping the population of small herbivores from tipping the ecosystem beyond its carrying capacity. I realized that the rainforest is made up of many intricate relationships between animals, plants, and fungi offering each other needed resources for survival. However, it wasn’t clear how I related to the organisms I saw until I attended a lecture by Dr. Wasserman.
Dr. Wasserman gave a brief characterization of the anthropocene, or an age of history characterized by humans’ accelerating negative impact on the environment. With the advent of the industrial revolution and capitalist expansion, the environment has been modified at an accelerating rate. Greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and species loss have exponentially risen since 1950. While environmental health is on the decline, the status of the environment has major implications for social health. Reduction in air, water, and land quality will result in reduced food security, dispossession, and illness. In this way, the human world and the environmental world have a bidirectional relationship. The harmful actions that we as humans carry out onto the environment eventually come back to harm us.
This bidirectional relationship does not just operate in a negative direction; in fact, it naturally operates in a positive direction. Plants, animals, and fungi provide many beneficial services that make human life possible, including the production of oxygen, cleaning of water, provision of nutrients and food, absorption of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants, and others. Humans have an active interest in maintaining ecosystem health.
Through the bidirectional theoretical framework, I began to think that I was connected to the organisms I saw on the hikes in hidden yet important and complex ways.
Wednesday, May 25, 2022: research begins
On this day, I read one important research paper by Tafoya et. al (2020). This paper evaluated the impact of three environmental policy approaches. With the advent of implementing protected areas and the program for ecological services (PES) in the 1990s, Costa Rica reversed deforestation by restoring forest cover from 24.4% in 1985 to >50% by 2011 (Tafoya et. al 2020). In addition, the paper discussed how the balance and quantity of three policies, namely PES, protected areas, and ecotourism correlated with differences in deforestation rates, protect biodiversity, and increase community participation. This is shown by how the Piro Research station experienced the second least amount of deforestation, highest community participationx, and the most complete primate community presence out of four other regions studied at Costa Rica (Tafoya et. al 2020). This indicated that effective human policy can indeed reverse the ecosystem damage that humans originally created. By improving the health of global ecosystems, we will eventually improve the health of humans. I then became interested in evaluating the efficacy of sustainable policy proposals. I will focus on this theme for my research project for the trip.
Thursday, May 26, 2022: birds, birds, and more birds
Today, I went on an early morning bird watching hike. This hike was my favorite one of the week. During the early morning, the birds at La Selva come alive. One encounter that was especially memorable happened at around 6:30 AM. One male great curassow had flown from a tree to my immediate right and then landed on the ground about 25 meters in front of me. Male great curassows have black plumage throughout their body, and the top of their beak is adorned with a fleshy yellow crest. The male had landed in close proximity to a female. Female great curassows have brown feathers and no yellow crest. The female had two baby curassows nearby that were foraging for food on the ground. The male tried to get the attention of the female by puffing its chest, spreading its wings, and making a deep repeated bellowing sounds. I think the female had rejected the male because she paid no attention to the behaviors of the male. In addition to being beautiful creatures, curassows provide an important service to the forest by feeding on fruit and dispersing seeds.
I also attended a lecture about primate natural history and biodiversity. I learned two interesting facts about primates. First, primates became intelligent over time in order to be able to identify, remember, and search for nutritious fruit. In addition, intelligence made primates highly adaptable to changing conditions. Second, primates are ecosystem engineers. This is because they consume many fruits and play an important role in spreading seeds and pollen of many trees. This makes them incredibly important for the health of all ecosystems they occupy. If we are to protect the many services that rainforests provide for us, we should care for all primates.
Friday, May 27, 2022 and Saturday, May 28, 2022: howler monkey census
On Friday, I spent the beginning of the day practicing getting into position in the forest for a howler monkey census. The census aimed to measure the amount of howler monkey groups present in the rainforest at La Selva. 44 people would split into pairs that occupied strategic parts of the forest. Each pair would stay at the surveying point for a few hours and report the time, direction, and distance of each monkey call they heard. After compiling everybody’s observations, the amount of howler monkey groups in the forest can be estimated.
On Saturday, I woke up at 2:20 AM to participate in the census. Howler monkey calls were all around my partner and I. We estimated around 25 groups in the forest. Their presence was reassuring, because I understood that howler monkeys and other primate species are a key indicator of rainforest health, and thus, they may also indicate future human health.
Conclusion
In summary, my first week in Costa Rica was incredible, and I have already learned a wealth of information pertaining to how humans shape and are shaped by the environment. All of the organisms I met, including howler monkeys, curassows, leaf cutter ants, hummingbirds, toucans, and much more had an important role in not only promoting the health of the rainforest, but also promoting the health of communities nearby and across the globe.
References
Tafoya, A. K., Brondizio, E. S., Johnson, C. E., Beck, P., Wallace, M. Quirós, Wasserman, M. D. (2020). Effectiveness of Costa Rica’s Conservation Portfolio to Lower Deforestation, Protect Primates, and Increase Community Participation. Front. Environ. Sci., https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2020.580724
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