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Friends of Nature

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About Us    In 1987 a group was born. The founders weren’t visionaries nor were they especially conscious of the future implications of the movement they were initiating. They were just plain concerned and, in some cases, angry. With improved infrastructure such as bridges, roads, electricity, and development starting to come to Dominical the local residents had become increasingly embittered at the sight of outsiders coming in here and shooting wildlife from their cars, poisoning our rivers to harvest fresh water shrimp to be sold elsewhere, leaving large amounts of trash on our beaches and roadsides, denuding and burning our forested hillsides and thereby mudding our rivers and streams. These frustrated residents banded together to try to do something about this adverse impact to their nature rich zone. The group organized was called “Amigos de la Naturaleza de Dominical (ANADO). It grew and gathered more supporters. Several years later it expanded to include Matapalo and Uvita areas. Today the group has evolved far past the scope of vision of that original vigilante group to become the primary environmental Non Governmental Organization (NGO) within the area and is now officially incorporated as the Asociacion de Amigos de la Naturaleza del Pacifico Central y Sur (ASANA) or the Association of Friends of Nature of the Pacific Central and South.    ASANA’s main objective is to connect all the fragments of forest between Terraba and Savegre Rivers, thus creating a natural corridor of protected lands which will have no interruptions and along which wildlife of all kinds can travel freely without the pressure of human depredation. The project is well advanced and is know locally and internationally as “Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor” It was officially recognized as the only portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that extends to the Pacific side of Central American Isthmus. That distinction has brought the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor considerable notoriety.    ASANA’s strategy is not to acquire land, and form a mega national park, but instead to work with property owners to find ways that the remaining tropical habitats can be used to generate income for the owners without adverse impact to the environment. In many cases lands that were deforested will be restored to some semblance of their former forested state because for one reason or another it becomes advantageous to the owner to do so.    To me the most important difference between the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor and the rest Mesoamerican Biological Corridor is that is the only case in all of Central America where a local NGO, in the case ASANA, has already been working on a wildlife corridor for 8 years and had been begging for some instruction to recognize the value of that work. It was the only case in where the Costa Rican National Commission for the Mesoamerican Biological corridor didn’t have to go into an area, begging to educate the community leaders about biological corridors, try to organize a group and then motivate it to work on a corridor project. It was the only case where the grass roots population of the area was demanding that somebody stand up and take notice.    What I’m really trying to say here is that our corner of paradise, as I’ve called it, is the way it is, in large part, because of the efforts of ASANA over the last 20 years. The influence of ASANA has been largely responsible for the well conserved state of the natural habitat within the area of the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor. ASANA began educating local school children about environmental issues in 1989. In 1991 it began forming and training groups of voluntary game wardens of which there are now 80. These groups have filled many complaints with authorities and forced many offenders to respect our natural resources. In one instance ASANA filed criminal charges against a high level functionary of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MOPT) for ordering the illegal extraction of sand from beaches for public use in road construction. This land mark judicial action stunned the established authority and resulted in a national ban on the extraction of sand from the beaches. Can you imagine what our beaches would look like today if this had not taken place? Try to visualize trucks and tractors down on Dominical Beach loading hundreds of loads of sand, hauling it away and spreading it on the coastal highway. That is exactly what would be happening had it not been for the decisive action of ASANA in the late 1980’s. There probably wouldn’t be enough sand left for a turtle to lay its eggs. The Olive Ridley Turtle Rescue Project was begun by Hacienda Baru in 1984 and taken over by ASANA in 1987. In the last two years over 50,000 newly hatched marine turtles have been released.    ASANA, through all of these actions and more, has tended to conserve and create paradise we have all come to love. It has created opportunities for business based on ecological tourism and the rational use of tropical nature. It has created an ambient where many people dream about living. And, it continues to bring value to the people and nature living here in this pacific coast paradise. Meet the board De Izquierda a derecha José Francisco Calderón (Fiscal), Geinier Alvarado Guzmán (Secretario), Kate Lomac-MacNair (Vocal), Jennifer Smith (Presidenta), Victoria Arronis de Bertelli (Vocal), Eduardo Espinoza Obando (Vocal), Jack Ewing (Vice-Presidente), Juan Ramon Segura (Tesorero)