WHERE COSTA RICA´S CONSERVATION STORY BEGAN
The forests came back
Now they are at risk
In 1963, Cabo Blanco became Costa Rica's first protected area, seeding a national conservation movement. Through it, Costa Rica has become the country the world now points to as proof that nature and development can coexist.
The Corredor Biológico Peninsular, established in 1998, became Costa Rica's first biological corridor - eight years before the National Programme of Biological Corridors came into policy.
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Both firsts. Same peninsula. Now they are both under threat.
THE LANDSCAPE
40% forest in 1986. 52% today
A genuine conservation success story
But forest cover and forest function are not the same thing
By the 1980s, widespread ranching had reduced tropical moist forest cover across the Cobano, Lepanto and Paquera peninsula to around 40%. It has since recovered to approximately 52% - driven by national payment for ecosystem services (PES) programmes, protected area establishment, and natural regeneration. That recovery is real, and it matters.
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But for four species - the jaguar, Baird's tapir, white-lipped peccary, and spider monkey - no survey is needed to establish the answer. They are gone. Lost within living memory, from a landscape that has since regrown around their absence.
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Whether the species that remain are present at the densities this landscape could support - and what it will take to ensure the corridor functions for them - is what Cabo Blanco Conectado exists to determine.
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PROJECT STRANDS
FOCAL SPECIES
PROTECTED AREAS ANALYSED
GBF TARGETS ADDRESSED
LOCAL COMMUNITY
Everyone who lives here
is already part of this
Conservation in Cobano does not begin and end at the boundary of a reserve. It happens in every garden that backs onto secondary forest. On every road driven at night. Around every outdoor light left on near the treeline.
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The residents of this district live alongside one of the most biodiverse landscapes in Central America. Most already know it. The WhatsApp groups, the neighbourhood conversations, the family slowing down to watch a deer crossing the road at dusk - this is a community that has always been paying attention.
What we are building is a shared map - one that shows how the person monitoring wildlife on their property, the rancher managing water on theirs, the hotel whose guests come for the forest, and the NGO replanting two valleys over are all working toward the same landscape.​​
Our role is to assist in making those connections legible - across the landscape, and across the community.
WHAT WE DO
Three programs. One mission.
We model connectivity
Fine-scale biological corridor mapping across Cobano identifies where the network is under pressure, which land parcels matter most, and where intervention will have the greatest effect.
We monitor biodiversity
Camera trap surveys, bird point count surveys, and amphibian monitoring will establish population baselines for our focal species and detect change over time across the study area.
We work with people
With ranchers, planners, road authorities, and communities - we aim to translate science into protective regulation, modified infrastructure, and payment schemes that make conservation economically viable.
LANDSCAPE CONNECTIVITY
A corridor under threat
Connectivity modelling translates land cover, road networks, and species-specific behaviour into a single output - a map of where wildlife can flow through the landscape, where that flow is restricted, and where the critical bottlenecks are.
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The corridor appears functional if you look only at forest cover. When you apply biologically realistic movement constraints for different wildlife guilds, a different picture emerges - one that reveals where the network is breaking down, and why.
This is the foundational output that everything else in our workflow builds on.
Without this, reforestation and conservation targets are spatially blind.
Source: Cabo Blanco Conectado · Modelling changes in connectivity within a Costa Rican biological corridor across different species parameterizations (in preparation).
GET IN TOUCH
Cabo Blanco Conectado is a small, independent NGO working in one of Central America's most significant conservation landscapes.
Whether you are a landowner, a funder, work for a conservation organization, or simply someone who cares about what happens to this corridor - if you have questions about our work, want to discuss collaboration, or want to know more about what we are building here, we would like to hear from you.
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