The Ochomogo, Cartago-based paint company, Celco, has developed a unique product that may help in the battle against potentially fatal mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, chikungunya, and zika. Costa Rican chemists, biochemists and pharmacists joined together to create a paint formula that repels insects and interferes with their reproduction including the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that can carry...

Controversy never seems to end for the northern Costa Rican town of Crucitas. After a Canadian gold mining company, Infinito Gold, was denied access to the land to mine, the case continues to die. The company appealed the Costa Rican government's decision, but finally gave up on the case in 2015 and packed up their bags. However the after effects continue. Not only have over 300 Nicara...

These past few weeks Ostional in Guanacaste has been as it is several times a year the nesting site of thousands of sea turtles, an impressive event that attracts national and international tourists to this beach that receives four different species of sea turtles. In this occasion, however, the number of olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) arriving at the National Wildlife Refuge ...

Cocoa cultivated in Costa Rica, especially in the northern Upala region bordering with Nicaragua, continues to be one of the best in the world. "There are four aspects that help to obtain a superior quality of chocolate. Among them, the correct genetics - and in Costa Rica there are excellent varieties - and also the post-harvest process, roasting, and conching. We have made notable progress in p...

The Romelia Wildlife Refuge is located near Montezuma, on the Nicoya Península, Puntarenas, and it was created on November 24th, 1998 as a result of the initiative of Albert Ingalls and Gitza Gatti, and is part of the biological corridor of the Tempisque Conservation Area, (Cabo Blanco Absolute Reserve, Curu Mixed Wildlife Reserve, Karen Morgensen Reserve, Nicholas Wessberg Reserve and the Romelia...

Costa Rica’s tropical climate makes it a great place to spot whales and dolphins; these marine mammals enjoy the warm waters of specific areas of the country and visit during certain months a year, according to the Keto Foundation close to 34% of the world’s cetacean species can be found in Costa Rica. Dolphin and whale watching tours continue to grow in popularity, and although with some luck ...

Dennis Janik, a native of Canada that has lived for many years in Costa Rica is the recipient of the Carole Noon Award for Sanctuary Excellence, which is given annually by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS). The Carole Noon Award for Sanctuary Excellence is given annually to a sanctuary or individual who embodies and puts into practice the GFAS philosophy of vision, dedication ...

Monteverde, Costa Rica suffered heavily from the intense rains dumped by Tropical Storm Nate earlier this month. The area was completely cut off from the rest of the country for days after the storm, with landslides blocking all access roads. The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve was closed for a week following the storm. Photos and drone footage show the immense landslides on the region's ste...

According to the company's latest sustainability report, Bridgestone reduced its carbon dioxide emissions in its operations in the region by 15 percent last year. The company aims to become carbon neutral, and is making strides towards the goal. In Costa Rica, the company's 1,042 employees produce 10,395 tires per day at the Bridgesteon plant in Belén, west of San José. The company's seco...

Up-to-date information on tides and ocean conditions for surfers and beachgoers is available at the Costa Rica Surf website. The top surf beaches in Costa Rica include Pavones, Dominical and Manuel Antonio in the southern Pacific region, Mal Pais, Nosara-Guiones, Playa Hermosa and Tamarindo in the northern Guanacaste Pacific region, and Puerto Viejo on the Costa Rican Caribbean coast. Driving di...

Costa Rica's National University's veterinary hospital took some 300 dogs and cats into their care that were orphaned after Tropical Storm Nate's rains Oct. 5-6 that left hundreds of houses inhabitable in different parts of the country. Many of these animals that were rescued by the country's National Animal Health Services (SENASA) needed to be treated for wounds. Currently 18 of these ani...

Costa Rica’s rich biodiversity is one of the many attractions this small country has to offer, the variety of fauna is more evident when it comes to birds, amphibians and insects. There are actually a few species that are endemic to the country, here is the short list of the animals you will only see in Costa Rica: 1) Red Poison Dart Frog or blue jeans frog: Its beautiful red color lets predato...

A Costa Rican man traveling to Sixaola, a town on the southern Caribbean coast, aided a sloth who was attempting to cross the main drag into town. "We were arriving in Sixaola ... and saw a sloth was crossing the street. A Dos Pinos delivery truck was headed right towards it, so I jumped out of the car, and helped it across the street, and then the critter posed for the photo," said Yeraldo Agüer...

The Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica's southern Pacific Osa Peninsula partially re-opened yesterday, Wednesday, October 11, said conservation officials. Domestic and foreign tourists will be able to explore some areas of the park, said the National System Conservation Areas (SINAC) in a statement, due to highly saturated soils and fallen trees and debris on some paths. The La Lorena vis...

The Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) shared preliminary data (as of October 8) on the status of damages to crops after recent heavy rains. More than 124 thousand hectares of crops (over 300,000 acres) were affected from the intense rains  dropped by Tropical Storm Nate late last week. The area with the greatest impact is the Chorotega Region with almost 106 thousand he...

Animal welfare officials are stepping up efforts to receive and deliver donations of food for animals affected by Tropical Storm Nate which ravaged many rural areas of Costa Rica last week. Some 85,000 heads livestock and poultry birds are vulnerable and in need of food, as are some 15,000 pets such as cats and dogs. Horses, pigs, cattle and poultry, along with pets, are at the heart of a ca...

As of yesterday, management regulations went into effect for four species of sharks (silky sharks and three species of thresher sharks) included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) during the XVII Conference of the parties (CoP) in Johannesburg, South Africa last year. The measures require that any future export of th...

Photo Archive illustration purposes only. The National Emergency Committee, the National System of Conservation Areas and the Ministry of Environment are raising the alert for communities close to marine lands and estuaries to stay alert for the possible presence of crocodiles and alligators in unusual areas. The heavy rains that have caused several rivers to overflow in different communitie...

Eight months of night-time and early morning patrols along Costa Rica's Caribbean beaches paid off for turtles and their eggs, thousands of which were rescued from poachers, said Commander Alexis Umaña, officer of the Barra del Pacuare Coast Guard Station. From February to September 2017, Coast Guard officials and volunteers with the environmental non-profit organization, Widecast, saved an est...

Five men in the northern region of Cañas, Guanacaste had their Sunday afternoon deer hunting spree put to a quick end by police who were tipped off on the subjects entering the forest with hunting dogs and rifles, said the Ministry of Public Security. Police were aided by officials of the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC, in Spanish), who have been on alert in recent weeks for deer ...

Multiplaza Escazú and Curridabat will be the first commercial centers in Costa Rica to join Costa Rica's National Strategy on Eliminating Single-Use Plastics, such as non-biodegradable straws, cups, bags etc. Currently, half of Multiplaza stores use paper or cardboard packaging, and the malls have a history of responsible waste management and environmental policies. The shopping centers, one lo...

Tons of garbage clogging the rivers that traverse San José has caused some quite severe flooding in recent weeks with bridge closures, damage to homes, and landslides plastered in the headlines. A recent report estimated that in the San José metropolitan area, there are 136 clandestine trash dumps where residents and companies deposit their waste in open air mounds, according to a report on Cha...

A public-private partnership led by the multinational company Cuestamoras aims to make the urban areas of Heredia, Costa Rica greener, and more livable for residents, with a big reforestation effort. The Costa Rican National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio), with headquarters in Santo Domingo de Heredia, has determined that the city of Heredia has the least amount of green space per inhabitant...

Experts alert that from August-December, when Costa Rica's crocodiles are breeding, there is often an uptick in attacks on humans. This is due to the fact that when males compete with other males for a mate, weaker males are often displaced from their usual habitats in and around river mouths and make forays into other areas such as oceans, beaches, canals, and mangroves. Sunday, September 2...

At last week's United Nations 72nd General Assembly, recommendations from the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace were presented, said Costa Rica's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Costa Rica joined the panel when it was established in 2015, and played an important role in developing mechanisms and best practices for promoting cooperation regarding water supplies and sources. Costa Rican ...

The Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation has organized an international congress in Costa Rica from November 29 to December 1, 2017 in which Pope Francis' "Laudato Si" and speeches on the environment by Benedict XVI will be the main themes, reported Papal news sources. Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si" is being used to create a tool to measure and rank countries' efforts in human ...

Travelling is something most of us enjoy, there are many ways of vacationing and sometimes the popular vacation experience just takes you to the most beautiful places in a country but doesn’t allow you to really explore the country’s culture, the way of living, traditions, and needs. Turtle Trax S.A. in Costa Rica offers precisely that, it is a company that organizes rural tourism projects on t...

On the morning of September 8, Taro Kono, Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, held a meeting with Manuel Antonio Gonzalez Sanz, Minister of Foreign Relations of the Republic of Costa Rica, who was visiting Japan on a tour of East Asia earlier this month, said Japanese and Costa Rican government statements.   Minister Kono welcomed Minister Gonzalez to Japan, noted that Japan and Cost...

After filing complaints to no avail with the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works (MOPT) about the dangers of crocodile viewing on a heavily transited bridge along the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, environmental activist and lawyer Walter Brenes appealed to the country's Supreme Court on the issue earlier this year. This week, the country's high court issued a ruling saying the ministry h...

Debt-for-nature swaps are financial transactions in which a portion of a developing nation's foreign debt is forgiven in exchange for local investments in environmental conservation measures. Monday, the debt-for-nature swap between the United States and Costa Rica invited non-profit organizations to submit proposals for forest conservation projects in the 7th round of funding under the program...

SailCargo Inc. is an emerging freight company looking to make a name in the sustainable transportation market. SailCargo is currently located in Punta Morales, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, where they are currently working on building transportation freight with a carbon-neutral system. “Our strategic choice of Costa Rica as a home port comes not only because of its aim of 100% country-wide carbon...

The following video was done as part of the joint taskscarried out between GasLab of the University of Costa Rica and the National University's Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (Ovsicori) with the purpose of measuring the gas expelled by the Poás Volcano in Costa Rica. The footage is from August 29th and it shows the non-stop degasification with a column of water vapor and magmatic...

Former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Óscar Arias Sánchez must appear for a preliminary hearing for apparent malfeasance, or breach of public trust, regarding the open-pit mining case of Crucitas in northern Costa Rica near the Nicaraguan border. The area was to be mined by Canadian transnational Infinito Gold who intended to exploit gold valued more than 800 million doll...

The Turrialba Volcano near Cartago, Costa Rica started churning back to life yesterday after a few weeks of calm. Yesterday, Sept. 5, 2017, the volcano started spewing a column of ash 1,000 meters above its crater, reported the National University's Volcanology and Seismology Observatory (Ovsicori-UNA). Ash has been flowing out of the crater since yesterday, and ashfall has been reported in ...

Scientists in Tennessee identified something curious in Costa Rica’s crocodiles that has sent them on a global journey to understand the potential role of a synthetic hormone in changing the reptiles’ sex. A recent report in Science Magazine discussed the muddy crocodile sex-tracking forays of Chris Murray, physiological ecologist at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, and his res...

The National Seismology Network issued a statement regarding the seismic activity that has been registered in the past week in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. “During the last week there have been several earthquakes strong enough to be felt in Costa Rica, located in different points of the country’s Pacific coast. These earthquakes have taken place close to the Osa Península, to the south of...

According to Project Wetlands carried out by SINAC-PNUD-GEF, seven of the country’s wetlands produce US$3 billion for the country annually. The study considers the Northeast Caribbean Wetland which includes the Tortuguero National Park, Barra del Colorado, and the Corredor Fronterizo Norte; the Las Baulas Marine Park; the Gandoca-Manzanillo wetlands in the Caribbean; Caño Negro, Maquenque, Térr...

A ruling Monday on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador charged 20 ship crew members with steep fines and prison time for fishing in protected waters, said a report on 88.5 WFDD, Public Radio for the Piedmont in North Carolina, U.S. The ruling comes at a moment when Costa Rican conservationists are seeking global support to prohibit the exportation of a stockpile of tons of hammerhead shark fin...

Q: What do snorkeling in a national park and having a drink after class have in common? A: You might find a plastic straw in both places. Trash that is improperly discarded and treated in San José, Costa Rica's populous Central Valley floats down to beaches on the country's omnipresent rivers and streams, where it then becomes an often permanent, and deadly, part of marine ecosystems, with plas...

Conservationists have lauded the proactive actions by park officials in the Tortugero, Costa Rica Conservation Area (ACTO, its initials in Spanish) to restrict areas where jaguars have been sighted. This meant some of the park's trails were closed to visitors for a period. However, this has not stopped a "small but powerful tourist business" from organizing unauthorized forays into such area...