Caribbean News Service By Desmond Brown, Caribbean News Service (CNS) SAN JOSE – In mid-December, technical officers from six Caribbean countries traveled to Costa Rica to learn about new ways of adding value to cassava production and modern technologies for processing the vegetable, in order to boost the industry, promote the diversification of markets, and improve the chain’s competitiven...

Each year, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden provides its employees an opportunity to request financial support for in-situ wildlife conservation or conservation education projects through the Internal Conservation Grants Fund. This time, the Cincinnati Zoo will grant funding to projects that benefit wildlife conservation in Ohio, Zambia, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The project that will b...

Source: iCafe By Joel Clement, Director, Office of Policy Analysis at the United States Department of the Interior How do we work with diverse ecosystems and landscapes to address climate change? How can we help these natural systems build resilience and pull more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Globally, the degradation of forests, agricultural areas, wetlands and other important la...

A nine-year-old schoolgirl is to front a global educational campaign to save one of the world’s rarest frogs. Lucy Marland joined forces with The University of Manchester after coming face to face with a Lemur Leaf Frog, kept at Manchester Museum and one of only a few hundred left anywhere in the world. The campaign, called Learning with Lucy, aims to educate primary age school children in t...

Located in the Manuel Antonio National Park, The Sloth Institute Costa Rica (TSI)’s vision is to expand scientific knowledge and education about the sloth to enhance their well-being and assure their conservation here and on this planet. Following is a holiday reflection by Sloth Institute staff about their noble work this year. You can read the original here. By Seda Sejud No matter wher...

Wikimedia Commons La Paz, Dec 18 (EFE).- The government of the western Bolivian province of Oruro issued a declaration of natural disaster Saturday after learning that Lake Poopo, the second largest in the country after Titicaca and which once covered more than 4,600 sq. kilometers (1,780 sq. miles), has almost dried up. Oruro Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez enacted a law that declared it a natura...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, DC, December 16, 2015 --(PR.com)-- The White House, U.S. Department of State, Partners of the Americas, and NAFSA: Association of International Educators announced eight new 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund grants sponsored by Campus Puerto Rico to support university partnerships and new study abroad programs at an event with Vice President Joe Biden...

Wikimedia Commons By Anny Castro Tegucigalpa, Dec 14 (EFE).- Science, technology and awareness are required to control a plague of southern pine beetles, known as "gorgojos," that has spread over hundreds of thousands of hectares of Honduran woods and threatens plantations, experts said in Tegucigalpa. To contain the spread of the beetles (Dendoctronus frontalis), more rigorous controls ...

Paris, Dec 12 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- Representatives at a U.N. climate summit outside Paris on Saturday approved the first-ever universal agreement to combat global warming, a deal that commits nearly 200 developed and developing nations to jointly transition to a low-carbon economy. At 7:26 p.m. local time, the president of the COP21 climate conference, French For...

Source: MSP Pew Charitable Trusts Media Release - Already recognized for its conservation policies, Costa Rica has become a champion in the fight against illegal fishing by ratifying the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the international treaty to stop illegally caught fish from entering the market. Under the agreement, countries will deny landing and other port services to vessels involv...

Source: iCafe COSTA RICA, Dec. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- During last month's International Coffee Week (SINTERCAFE), an event that gathered more than 500 professionals of the coffee industry from around the world, Café de Costa Rica announced its commitment to becoming the world's first fully environmentally sustainable coffee-producing region. "With growing exports towards the United States,...

Paris (PRWEB) December 07, 2015 - At the COP 21 this week, the government of Australia announced the creation of the International Partnership for Blue Carbon. It will bring together governments non-profit organizations, intergovernmental agencies, and scientists to increase understanding of, and accelerate action on the important role of coastal blue carbon ecosystems in climate change action. Fo...

PARIS (December 5, 2015)—Today, countries, states, and financial and civil society institutions have announced new restoration pledges for Latin American and Caribbean through Initiative 20x20, a country-led effort to bring degraded and deforested land into restoration by 2020. The new commitments bring the total area to be restored to 27.7 million hectares (or about 95,700 square miles, an area r...

Wikimedia Commons The charity behind the popular Hollywood film Fly Away Home is giving birdwatchers and nature lovers an opportunity to win a special, two-week vacation in Costa Rica. Operation Migration is conducting a unique project to help the endangered North American whooping crane a safe migration flight from their summer home in Wisconsin to their wintering grounds in Florida. That'...

Source: Flickr Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit marine conservation organization, filed a full petition  with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHRC) in Washington, D.C., accusing Costa Rica of using the judicial system to violate his rights and derail his conservation efforts. If successful, this petition could ...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Dec 3 (EFE).- A veterinarians' association and an oceanographer said a group of scientists who discovered more than 330 dead whales beached in southern Chile put public health at risk by concealing that information for more than five months. The scientists who made the find in June and reported it to Chilean authorities on Nov. 17 allegedly withheld the informati...

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs At the Paris Climate Conference (COP21), Costa Rica has taken on a leadership role, which has not gone unnoticed by attendees and the international press. The presence of delegates from Costa Rica is lead by Chancellor Manuel Gonzalez, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affair, and by Chief United Nations Climate Affairs Negotiator Christiana Figueres. L...

Wikimedia Commons Leticia, Colombia, Nov 30 (EFE).- While world leaders seek to negotiate an agreement in Paris to deal with the threat posed by global warming, an Indian tribe living under the Amazon rainforest's vast green canopy remains skeptical about the COP21 summit in the French capital, saying that the damage caused to the planet cannot be reversed. The chief of the Huitoto people, ...

Source: Flickr Commons (PRWEB) November 30, 2015 - NewsWatch featured NatureVision TV as part of its monthly AppWatch, which takes a look at the latest and coolest applications on the market for iOS, Android, and Windows. Joe Toohey, the host of AppWatch and technology expert, conducted the app review and shared with viewers how this channel features hundreds of hours of HD and 4K footage of t...

Source: UPR San Juan, Nov 22 (EFE).- Students and professors from the University of Puerto Rico, or UPR, made a Christmas tree using plastic bottles to draw attention to the need to recycle and protect the environment. The six-meter (20-foot) tree at the campus in Carolina, a San Juan suburb, will be decorated with 2,000 plastic bottles and the manger was constructed with shipping pallets, ...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Nov 26 (EFE).- Mexico's Profepa federal environmental protection agency has intensified its search for a Bengal tiger that escaped from a hunting ground a month ago in the southern state of Guerrero. The big cat is in an area known as El Potrerito, part of the Coyuca de Benitez municipality, the institution said Wednesday in a statement. Working in coordina...

Scarlet Macaw Media Release by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Wednesday, November 25, 2015 — As key climate talks get underway in Paris, Eric Campbell explores potential solutions to global warming – from thermal power in Costa Rican jungles to giant North Sea wind farms and California’s solar start-ups. It’s easy to believe that the planet is frying and that nobody – not even the s...

For more than a decade, Sharkproject International has been presenting the only environmental awards in the world specifically focused on sharks. Alongside a positive award, the SharkGUARDIAN, there is also a negative award, the SharkENEMY of the year. The Sharkproject team nominates potential recipients and the winners are chosen by an international jury. An interesting nomination this year...

Jones Snowboards working in the Costa Rica rainforest Transworld Business News Release - Truckee, CA (Nov 19, 2015) – Jones Snowboards is proud to announce a partnership with the non-profit rainforest reforestation project Association Community Carbon Trees (ACCT). ACCT has spent the last twelve years fighting against climate change by reforesting clear cut swaths of Costa Rican rainforest wit...

Source: Flickr Commentary by Sea Shepherd Founder, Captain Paul Watson Fourteen years ago in 2001, I took my ship Ocean Warrior to Cocos Island, Costa Rica. When we arrived we found an Ecuadorian long-liner, the San Jose, busily slaughtering sharks not far off the beach of Cocos Island National Park. Note by The Costa Rica Star: We have not edited this article, which was fully written by M...

Texas A&M University Media Release - Earlier this year, Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener traveled to Costa Rica to study ridley sea turtles for her doctoral dissertation. While examining one male turtle, she and her companions found a long plastic straw lodged in the turtle’s nostril. Her video of the team extracting the straw has received more than 5.5 million views on YouTub...

Managua, Nov 5 (EFE).- The state-run Nicaraguan Grand Interoceanic Canal Commission on Thursday approved Chinese concession holder HKND Group's environmental and social impact studies for that waterway project, clearing the way for construction to begin. "We're authorizing HKND now to begin the design, structural and construction processes," the commission's president, Manuel Coronel Kautz, sai...

Source: Twitter Justin Smith is a United States high school student from Maryland who dreams of coming to Costa Rica for two reasons: He wants to do volunteer work at a local orphanage and also at various wildlife rescue and research centers. Justin is a reader of The Costa Rica Star. He is enrolled at Salisbury Christian School, where students are given opportunities outside of the classro...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Oct 25 (EFE).- More than 200 black bears were killed in the first day of an authorized hunt in Florida, a state where hunting the animals had been banned for 21 years, officials said Sunday. A total of 207 bears were killed on Saturday, the first day of the seven-day season, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, or FWC, said. Hunters killed nearl...

g-star.com Pharrell Williams, the Grammy-winning artist behind that infectious tune “Happy”, is challenging all of us to join him in a campaign to stop throwing plastic products – especially bottles – into the ocean. Marine debris is killing our oceans, and we can join with Pharrell’s “RAW for the Ocean” project to bring that crime against Mother Nature to a halt. Plastic pollution in the o...

Source: Zoo Ave A columbiform bird that was apprehended by corrections officers as it attempted to smuggle drugs into prison will perform community service at a wildlife rescue center in Costa Rica. The avian specimen, which goes by the alias Narcopaloma (narco-pigeon) has been remanded to the custody of Rescate Animal Zoo Ave, a rescue and rehabilitation center in La Garita, province of Al...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Oct 21 (EFE).- Mexican authorities have shut down nine tourist projects in Tulum, a protected natural area in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, citing their impact on wild flora and fauna. Staff with the Profepa federal environmental protection agency verified through five environmental impact assessments and four forestry inspections of those tourist de...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Miami, Oct 13 (EFE).- The shark migrations that occur at this time of year on the southeastern coast of the United States set off a new alarm at Miami Beach, where at least a hundred were spotted. The school of sharks, swimming in a southerly direction Monday in search of warmer waters, was just 50 meters (160 feet) from the shore at Miami Beach, according to video...

Tiny pieces of synthetic materials contaminate 12 beaches of Costa Rica, including some of the most popular destinations for tourists and expats. Jaco Beach is one of a dozen beaches where micro plastic debris can be found in abundance, floating along with plankton and mixing with grains of sand. According to a report filed by Michelle Soto of daily newspaper La Nacion, micro plastic debris par...

Mexico City, Oct 11 (EFE).- Authorities seized 3.5 tons of shark fins and 529 kilos of sea bass swim bladders in Manzanillo, a coastal city in the western Mexican state of Colima, the Profepa federal environmental protection agency said. The animal parts came from "wildlife in Colima" and had been dehydrated, the agency said in a statement. Inspectors found the shark fins and sea bass swim b...

Source: Paul Watson Facebook Timeline In September, the highest court in Costa Rica issued a resolution that gave Paul Watson, the controversial founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a partial victory in a case that presented several complaints by the Canadian environmentalist against prosecutors and government officials. The Constitutional Chamber, popularly known as Sala IV, i...

Elle and Ernie. Source: Buena Vista Villas Quepos/Manuel Antonio, COSTA RICA (PRWEB) October 07, 2015 - Sloths are being reintroduced into the Costa Rican rain forest thanks to a unique partnership between Buena Vista Luxury Villas (BVLV) and The Sloth Institute of Costa Rica (TSI). The first phase of the partnership will reintroduce sloths - orphaned and hand raised - back into the rainfor...

MANUEL ANTONIO, COSTA RICA (PRWEB) OCTOBER 06, 2015 - The Sloth Institute together with Kids Saving the Rainforest announces the Elementary School Sloth Challenge, inspired by Ms. Megan Yang, 1st grade teacher at West Point Elementary in Surprise, Arizona. Ms. Yang believes in teaching students at a young age about conservation. “I am using the “adoption” of a sloth as a way to educate students a...

Source: PRETOMA PRETOMA News Release, October 5, 2015 – San José, Costa Rica - Stemming from the recent blockades of public highways by the fisheries sector last September 2, the government agreed to a series of reckless, illegal, and unconstitutional agreements with certain members of the sector. The agreements and commitments were communicated to environmental groups after a formal request t...

Flick Commons The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, a 140-year old institution serving the State of Ohio, recently launched an initiative to spread awareness about conservation of the Bradypodidae family. The initiative also seeks to support The Sloth Institute, a wildlife research and rescue center located in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. The Cincinnati Zoo cares for Moe, a 16-year-old ...