Source: Wikimedia Commons After tallying a death count of 90 marine turtle carcasses on the beaches and in the ocean off Guanacaste, biologists, investigators and conservation officials believe that high levels of toxicity caused by coelenterates such as jellyfish may be to blame for the grisly deaths. As reported by online news daily CRHoy.com, this Medusa Hypothesis comes after necropsy stud...

Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica – Described by National Geographic as the “most biologically intense place on Earth,” there is an urgent need to protect the rich marine biodiversity of the Osa Peninsula due to rampant commercial fishing that is rapidly killing off dolphins, whales, sea turtles and entire marine ecosystems. The MPA for OSA group (Marine Protected Area for OSA Peninsula) has started a cam...

In the case of butterflies, it pays to look like your neighbor. New information about long-winged butterflies in Costa Rica is showing how the importance of “mimicry” and the butterflies’ natural promiscuity has led to interbreeding and the creation of new species that look very much alike, according to a study led by University of Chicago evolutionary biologist, Marcus R. Kronforst. “In evo...

The Ecological Blue Flag flies high over Playa Hermosa for the 11th year. PLAYA HERMOSA, GUANACASTE - On Saturday, November 16, 2013, on a gorgeous Guanacaste beach day filled with nothing but clear blue sky and sunshine, the community of Playa Hermosa gathered together on its "beautiful beach" to celebrate its 11th year of garnering Costa Rica's Ecological Blue Flag status (out of 12 years si...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The Hagnauer Foundation of Costa Rica is pleased to announce that two rescued jaguarundis or eyra cats (Puma yagouaroundi) will be reintroduced to their habitat in Guanacaste in the next few months. The two felines were recently found by officials from the Guanacaste Conservation Area (Spanish initials: ACG) during a routine patrol in the Curubande sector, which is part...

Irazu Volcano Crater, Costa Rica November has been a busy month for the Irazu volcano, one of Costa Rica's most emblematic tourist attractions. Even though the high tourist season is still a few weeks away, the Irazu has been attracting a lot of attention in news media headlines around the world, which claim that volcanic ash, snow and even rose petals have been falling on the skirts of this a...

Source: Wikimedia Commons On the morning of September 5th, 2012, residents of Guanacaste were going about their business and preparing to celebrate Costa Rica's 191st anniversary of its independence from Spain when a powerful earthquake struck the Nicoya Peninsula. That seismic movement, which registered a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter scale, is still producing aftershocks and striking fear ...

STC Board of Directors Pledges to Match Donations up to a total of $10,000! Sea Turtle Conservancy (STC) has joined #GivingTuesday, a first-of-its-kind effort that will harness the collective power of a unique blend of partners-- charities, families, businesses and individuals-- to transform how people think about, talk about and participate in the giving season. Coinciding with the Thanksgivin...

Students of the National University (UNA) in Nicoya have decided to be part of the solution in defense of the environment, conducting recycling, cleaning and electronics collection campaigns and even giving talks to other students. The effort is headed by UNA’s Ecological Blue Flag Committee, composed of Evans Jimenez, Adriana Vasquez Duarte, Aaron Jimenez and Karina Campos, who are guided by P...

There are people who have dedicated themselves to garbage, even living with it in homes that they have converted into recycling businesses. The Voice of Guanacaste decided to visit some of these collection centers in the area of Nosara and Samara to find out about the challenges of the garbage collector lifestyle. The collection centers receive recyclable waste such as plastic bottles, glass, T...

Source: Guanacaste Conservation Area A moribund tropical green sea turtle rescued by members of the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network (WIDECAST) in Costa Rica is improving and might be returned to its habitat. Fishermen and maritime tour operators in the Guanacaste province found more than 40 dead sea turtles on Tuesday, November 5th, and immediately alerted nature conservation o...

An ongoing lightning strike detection and measurement program conducted by the Electricity Institute of Costa Rica (Spanish initials: ICE) has tallied more than 1.6 million atmospheric discharges across the country since 2011, and Guanacaste seems to be the most electrifying province, followed by Alajuela and Heredia. With more than 600,000 recorded lightning strikes in 2012, Costa Rica is now one...

La Gran Vista, located just outside San Isidro de General in South Pacific Costa Rica, is an Environmental Conservation Project where students, volunteers, and visitors can learn how a tropical organic farm functions. We are an Educational Institute where individuals can learn how to milk a cow, harvest a mango tree, or use medicinal herbs. La Gran Vista gives everyone an opportunity to learn ab...

Source: Flickr UPDATE: before you continue to read this news article below, be advised that there are some facts that are not correct and clarified by The Tico Times, please read this article and get your facts straight on what happened in Tamarindo. Big thanks to our friends at Witch's Rock Surf Camp for getting in contact with The Costa Rica Star to ensure correct information is provided to ...

Gandoca, Costa Rica — In an emotional reunion, Todd Steiner, Executive Director of Turtle Island Restoration Network, delivered a check for over $14,000 US to the family of Jairo Mora Sandoval, the sea turtle conservationist murdered earlier this year while protecting nesting sea turtles on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. The funds were collected from some of the 150,000 individuals and ...

Source; ACG Costa Rica As marine biologists and members of the National Coast Guard Service of Costa Rica scramble to investigate the mysterious massive death of dozens of green tropical sea turtles off the Pacific coast of Guanacaste, disheartening news reports are arriving: 23 marine turtle carcasses have washed in Playa La Flor in Nicaragua, and many of them are showing inscrutable signs of...

Entomologists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have described 277 new species of braconid wasps in the tribe Heterospilini. The braconid family, to which the tribe Heterospilini belongs, is a large and diverse group of parasitoid wasps. There are about 17,000 recognized wasp species and many thousands more undescribed. Most braconid wasps are internal and external parasito...

Wikimedia Commons Juicy and delicious oranges that could rival those grown in California, Florida, Brazil, ad Spain are being grown right here in Costa Rica, particularly in certain coffee farms in Guanacaste where citrus trees are being introduced to break up the monoculture practice of cultivating a single crop. Oranges are now the fastest-growing crops in Costa Rica; in 2012, production gre...

Wikimedia Commons The coastal waters of Costa Rica are teeming with sharks. Many species of the Elasmobranch subclass swim in the waters off Guanacaste, Puntarenas, Cocos Island, Limon, and many other coastal communities in Costa Rica. This rich selachian biodiversity suits Brett McBride, captain of the Research Vessel (RV) Ocearch just fine, you see, this is a man who recently fell asleep amo...

The Nosara Recycling and Education Center is starting a new collecting program for everyone living in Guiones and Peladas beach between Super Dos Lorenas and the Boca Nosara River. Every Wednesday the Center will be collecting recyclable materials such as plastic, tetrapak, aluminum, glass, paper and cardboard. The Nosara Recycling Association asks everyone to put all recyclables clean and d...

Source: UCR Residents in some regions of Guanacaste are enjoying better roadways thanks to a special mix of asphalt tested by Costa Rica's National Laboratory of Structural Models and Materials (Spanish acronym: Lanamme). This special asphalt formula presents various advantages over mixes that have been previously in Costa Rica; in particular, it presents greater permeability at a more reasona...

Source: Zoo Ave Fecebook One of the most beloved and emblematic wildlife species of Costa Rica had its own special celebration last Saturday. Zoo Ave, Costa Rica's premier wildlife rescue center, observed International Sloth Day with a series of educational activities centered on one of the cutest and most docile arboreal creatures in Costa Rica and 17 other countries in Latin America. Octo...

Source: Wikimedia Commons A small island in the province of Guanacaste is gaining significant attention among marine conservation circles as the busiest point for sea turtles that massively arrive in Costa Rica during nesting season. San Jose island is part of the Guanacaste Conservation Area (Spanish initials: ACG), and from November 2012 until this past May had registered 1,933 nesting event...

The dredging of the Río Nosara’s channel and dike construction are in their final stage. So says Marcos Avila, president of Integral Development Association of Nosara (ADIN – Asociación de Desarrollo Integral de Nosara), who mentioned that the works could be completed by early November. In a trip made by the Voice of Guanacaste on Wednesday October 9th, one could see the progress and work of...

The 159 earthquakes registered in Costa Rica this past September did not leave any casualties or material damage but unleashed "seismic energy" equivalent to the "explosion of one million tons of dynamite," reported the National Seismological Network (RSN – Red Sismológica Nacional). The average daily number of tremors in the past month was 5.2, but Costa Ricans reported feeling only 14 earthqu...

Source: Wikimedia Commons For more than a week, news media outlets in Costa Rica and around the world have been publishing articles with eye-grabbing headlines that allude to the worldwide popularity of bananas (Musa acuminata et al) as being responsible for the demise of the Caiman crocodilus in our Caribbean coast. Clever headlines such as “Yellow Peril,” “Crocs Going Bananas,” “Love For Ban...

In Santa Barbara of Santa Cruz, one small organization is having a big impact in the debate surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Sol de Vida, a non-profit organization, was founded in 1989 to promote the use of solar ovens and since then has become a driving force behind the battle to keep the canton and the province free of transgenic crops. During its first years, their focus wa...

Space Junk. Source: NASA The human race has a seemingly unlimited capacity for producing waste, and this most unwelcome trait extends beyond our planet. Space junk, all those defunct satellites and miscellaneous debris that no longer serve a purpose, is growing at an alarming rate. This is something that the Ad Astra Rocket Company of Costa Rica is looking into. The issue of too much junk o...

The Municipality of Nicoya will establish an environmental park on 15 hectares that were purchased during the administration of former County mayor Eduardo Gutiérrez to build a much-needed landfill. The reason why the park has been planned, instead of the landfill, is because the land is not suitable for a dump. Furthermore, the lot was purchased for about $330,000 (₡165 million), but according...

San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital city, is the fourth city in the world most vulnerable to natural disasters, according to a report by Swiss re-insurer, Schweizer Rück (Swiss Re). Swiss Re, is a leading wholesale provider of reinsurance, insurance and other insurance-based forms of risk transfer. The report reads: “In some conurbations, a natural disaster can have a devastating effect on the e...

The Costa Rica Star has previously published about Night Chirps in Costa Rica: Singing Mice and Clicking Geckos. Two species of tawny brown singing mice that live deep in the mountain cloud forests of Costa Rica and Panama set their boundaries by emitting high-pitched trills, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered. Although males of both the Alston's singing mou...

Gwadar, before the earthquake. Flickr CC In the aftermath of the terrible earthquake in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a new island has emerged off the coast of Gwadar, leaving the people of Costa Rica to ponder about two things: 1 – The geotectonic birth of our country in the Jurassic period, and 2 – How long before President Daniel Ortega claims the new island as part of Nicaragua (insert...

How many species live on the Earth? Scientists estimate roughly 8.7 million, according to a study in the journal PLoS Biology, published by the Public Library of Science. The crucial point, however, is that approximately 83% of those plant and animal species have yet to be discovered. Scientists calculate that there are probably 6.5 million species living on land, and 2.2 million in the ocean, ...

Normally, you don’t see tough, radical conservationists attending lectures by land developers. But there they were, 100 strong, from the Nature Conservancy, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and from all over Latin America – all raptly listening to how land development can actually preserve forests. Nervous before his formidable audience, Guillermo Piedra Gonzalez e...

One of the biggest thrills in birding is to chance upon a bird that has wandered far out of its normal range. In Central America, the majority of these accidental species have come from North America, but there have also been a number of sightings of vagrants from South America. The most recent addition to the list of South American birds that have strayed to Central America is the Maguari St...

Source: Zoo Ave Facebook UPDATE: This article is pending confirmation from Zoo Ave biologists on the snake, which may be a lora venenosa, a venomous (and pretty) pit viper endemic to Costa Rica and Panama. The Bothriechis lateralis is not as dangerous as the Bothrops asper; still, Don Johnny's story is commendable. An amazing display of utmost respect for wildlife recently took place in Cos...

The Costa Rica Star previously reported on a unique worm powered bio-digester within a home in Costa Rica. Letting nature guide them and adapting to coexisting with it, is the motto of a group of young men who have implemented a system of permaculture and biodynamics in North Esperanza of Nicoya. Brothers Esteban and Felipe Viquez along with Joel Vega, in their early 20s, came from Puntaren...

Source: Zoo Ave Facebook Officials from the Zoo Ave Wildlife Rescue Center of Costa Rica recently communicated the sad passing of Simona, a female adult sloth that suffered five severe electrical discharges that charred most of her bristly coat and forced veterinarians to amputate most of her limbs. Simona was about to be fitted with a special prosthesis; alas, she could not withstand her exte...

Crocodilians in Costa Rica are being threatened by bananas farmed in the Central American country. Caiman, one of the most common species of crocodilian in Central America, have been found to have high levels of pesticide in their blood, which causes health problems in the predator. The reason for these high levels is the increased demand for bananas across the globe. Over $12bn is spent ...

200 environment volunteers of the Costasverdes organization have reforested 20 hectares of the terrestrial maritime zone in Playa Hermosa near Jaco on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. This project is an initiative that started five years ago and involves educational centers, communities, local authorities and businesses, all of which participate in reforesting this beach as part of the Playa He...