Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) - 163,000 hectares of tropical dry forest restoration in northwestern Costa Rica.
On-rushing climate change is warming and drying ACG.
ACG's major mitigation hope is to expand its rainforested eastern side behind these central volcanoes.
ACG's Rincon Rainforest expansion - yellow-green (right central) - is now in its final effort to acquire Sector A (bright purple).
Sector A is 3,500 hectares (9,000 acres) of middle-elevation to low elevation old growth and lightly logged rainforest.
It is on the market today for an average of $1,500/ha.
If we buy it now to add to ACG, it is saved forever, and it
* mitigates the climate change impact on both ACG dry forest and rain forest
* adds another 30,000 species to the 300,000 species already in ACG, and
* preserves the last large block of unprotected uncut old growth forest remaining in all of northwestern Costa Rica.
Carbon footprint? Every hectare purchased locks down 300 tons of carbon forever.
The 3,500 hectare Sector A is the blue, pink and beige rain forest properties mapped here.
All green is firmly protected ACG.
A newly purchased Sector A will expand ACG to the margin of the agroscape.
Some denizens of Sector A are very large; the female Megasoma weighs more than a mouse, the tree extends 40 meters above the image.
Some of the Sector A denizens are smallish.
And all she knows is that if you do not buy her home off the marketplace, she is gone forever.
Sector A: rain forest interior - tapir, beetle and butterfly home
The advancing agroscape: Sector A rain forest is on the marketplace and is the forest in the background, March 2008.
Boilerplate and fine print: There is no overhead charged on donations to save this forest forever. Every penny goes to forest purchase, $0.15/square meter, $1,500 for two and a half football fields worth. As soon as the forest is purchased, it is protected forever through inclusion in the ACG, which is a national park covering 2% of Costa Rica and a decentralized organ of the Costa Rican Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy (MINAE). This entire protection process is tried, true, and running since the inception of ACG in 1966 as one of Costa Rica's first protected areas and its conversion to a Conservation Area in 1986. The GDFCF has already obtained 13,000 ha of forest for ACG expansion (see example of Rincon Rainforest). All you need to do is contribute - we do all the rest for you.
The Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund (GDFCF) is a US 501(c)(3) (tax ID 94-3280315). You may donate by mail by sending a check made out to Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund to Professor Daniel Janzen, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104 USA. You may also donate stocks or land - contact Janzen at djanzen@sas.upenn.edu. Donations to GDFCF are deductible from taxable income to the extent allowable by law.
Or you can do it through Google Checkout which will pass on 100% of your donation (no fees of any kind).
The Guanacaste Dry Forest Fund does not really seek donations. It seeks a contract with you to buy the existence of this forest off the marketplace and into perpetuity.
Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs (djanzen@sas.upenn.edu, whallwac@sas.upenn.edu) 8 April 2008 HOME