Source: Flickr Creative Commons Dozens of children from the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica recently gave Mother Earth a nice present in advance of August 15th: 500 fruit trees planted in strategic areas. According to Yency Arroyo Murillo of Diario Extra, business leaders and public officials from the Municipality of Osa helped in coordinating this noble cause. The trees have been planted along...

Source: Flickr Creative Commons Monsanto, the global agro-industrial corporate giant that is used to having its way around farming operations around the world in the name of big profits, is experiencing one setback after another. The next disappointment for Monsanto in the near future could arrive in Costa Rica via the country's Constitutional Chamber (informally known as Sala Cuarta). A fe...

Costa Rica Forest Coverage 2010 - Source: MINAE Before World War II, almost 75 percent of Costa Rica was covered by forest land. What happened in the next four decades was particularly damaging to the national ecosystem: The national forest coverage decreased to 21 percent. In just 33 years, from 1950 to 1983, more than 46 percent of forest land in Costa Rica was lost due to lack of refores...

In the last two and a half weeks, Nosara Wildlife Rescue's Brenda Bombard has received or rescued more than 41 howler monkeys that have been electrocuted on many of Nosara's uninsulated power transformers. Many have had to be euthanized and many others have had a limb amputated. Most of the power lines in the Playa Guiones area have been exchanged for the insulated type but now the monkeys and ...

This is Sansita. Source: Zoo Ave Facebook An unidentified farmer in Golfito, a community located in the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica and near the southern border with Panama, recently saved the life of a female sloth that had been subject to a horrific attack by two men thought to be in their 30s. According to news reports by daily newspaper La Teja, the sloth was hit by rocks and fist...

In the past The Costa Rica Star has published about Rancho Margot and how Eco-literacy programs are evolving within their self sufficient jungle ranch. El Castillo, COSTA RICA – July 2013 – Rancho Margot, innovator and educator in sustainable community development, permaculture and self-sufficiency, is pleased to announce the Social Responsibility Fund. Juan Sostheim, owner and founder of Ranch...

Learning about a country’s culture is one of the fun and interesting aspects of traveling. In Costa Rica, an intriguing cultural location is the village of Guaitil in the northern Pacific province of Guanacaste. Located between the small cities of Santa Cruz and Nicoya, Guaitil is famous for its pottery in the pre-Columbian style of the Chorotegas – one of the main indigenous groups of Costa Ri...

In this article taken from the Facebook page of Captain Paul Watson, he tells a story about his issues with the Costa Rican Government and blasts them for not doing more for the murder of environmentalist Jairo Mora Sandoval. At the request of the Japanese government, the Costa Rican government seemingly spared no expense in tracking me down and having me detained in Germany in May of 2012. ...

Five members of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) came to study the state of the reefs of both Samara and Carrillo. In charge of this expedition was Juan José Alvarado Barrientos, professor of biology and a specialist in coral reef ecology. The Voice of Guanacaste had the opportunity to interview him about the importance of our reefs, their current state and keys for maintenance. After the stu...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Environmentalist Jairo Mora Sandoval was the victim of a violent and senseless murder, but his life was not in vain. Case in point: Around 82 leatherback sea turtle hatchlings were released by the volunteers of the Widecast environmental protection non-profit organization this past weekend in Moin, province of Limon. These hatchlings emerged from the eggshells and nests...

At the recent Expoinnova 2013 fair of invention and ingenuity organized by the University of Costa Rica, one exhibitor's clever product stood out: Cookies made with the crushed and finely pulverized larvae of beetles. Equally ingenious is the name of these cookies: Buzzcrunch. The inventors of these elaterid-based delicacy admitted that their product is clearly destined for marketing to curious to...

A happy man who studies happiness: Prof. Ruut Veenhoven Although Costa Rica’s number one position on the World Database of Happiness has been publicized ad nauseam, skeptics and detractors have questioned the validity of the research. How can the people of a developing country with limited resources and a conservative, social-democratic system government riddled with corruption and bureaucracy...

While 15,000 Costa Rican fishermen and their families are suffering from a severe economic crisis, in the last 10 years international tuna fishing boats have taken more than 90 percent of the tuna extracted per year from the Costa Rican Pacific, using high-impact fishing methods. A recent study by Costa Rican Fishery Federation (FECOP) and the Costa Rican National Fishing Sector, based on ...

As you may or may not know the land under the Ara Project in Rio Segundo de Alajuela has been sold and the birds and volunteers are being evicted. It is a disgrace, there is no other way of saying it politely. Thanks to the efforts of Hotel Punta Islita - the Ara Project has a location to move to but CANNOT make the move without funding. There are a few things we can do to help in the shor...

Rosie Heindl, a volunteer working with the auction, says they have collected over one hundred donated items for the 5th Annual Save The Howlers Auction that will be held at the Harbor Reef Restaurant this Friday February 1st. “We have many practical items, from restaurant gift certificates to pool supplies,” said Heindl. “We also have massages, surf lessons, house rentals, art and jewelry, and ...

They often arrive in bad shape — hit by cars, zapped by high-voltage wires as they climb trees, or orphaned because superstitious locals have killed their moms. But life gets sweet once the gates open at Costa Rica's sloth sanctuary, one of few in the world specializing in the study of these famously sedentary and solitary mammals. The youngest even get stuffed animals to hug in incubators...

Once abundant in the Nicoya Peninsula, the Ara Macaw (lapa roja) population has decreased over the years, but efforts are now being made to help the macaws recover. Nelson Marin Mora, director of the Tempisque Conservation Area with Minaet in Nicoya, said there are now very few macaws in the peninsula, primarily because people have captured the vibrantly colorful birds to sell as pets. Ho...

The Ministry of Environment and Energy (Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía, SITRAMINAE) Workers Union and former Environment deputy minister, Mario Boza, announced that a new law aimed to restructure the management of national parks and wildlife refuges is being drafted. Boza points out that several current issues regarding national parks, such as the absence of administrative or management polic...

Safari Surf School, Costa Rica's premier surf school and camp for fourteen years, strives to be carbon neutral with the addition of the "Innovative Biodiesel Project" -- the world's first small-scale biodiesel production system that is closed-loop (zero waste), energy independent (off-grid), and carbon-negative. Safari Surf's Sustainability Director, Carl Kish, has partnered with biodiesel expert ...

Puntarenas, Costa Rica – An international team of scientists has just returned from an ocean drilling expedition on board the JOIDES Resolution, near the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, designed to study the subduction zone where the Cocos tectonic plate dips beneath the Caribbean plate. This fault boundary was responsible for causing two earthquakes earlier this year, on September 5 and October 23. ...

ALMATY | Wed Dec 19, 2012 8:58am EST ALMATY (Reuters) - A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, an American and a Canadian blasted off on Wednesday to the International Space Station (ISS), where the men are to spend half a year in orbit. The Russian-built Soyuz TMA-07M lifted off on time, at 1212 GMT, from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.On th...

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Tue Dec 18, 2012 10:22am EST CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A pair of NASA moon-mapping probes smashed themselves into a lunar mountain on Monday, ending a year-long mission that is shedding light on how the solar system formed. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft had be...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Mon Dec 17, 2012 12:25pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - A paralyzed woman has been able to feed herself chocolate and move everyday items using a robotic arm directly controlled by thought, showing a level of agility and control approaching that of a human limb. Jan Scheuermann, 53, from Pittsburgh, was diagnosed with a degenera...

By Nina Chestney and Alister Doyle LONDON | Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:20am EST LONDON (Reuters) - International climate scientists are more certain than ever that humans are responsible for global warming, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, according to a leaked draft report by an influential panel of experts. The early draft, which is still...

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:43pm EST CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA plans to crash a pair of small robotic science probes into the moon next week after a successful year-long mission to learn what lies beneath the lunar surface, officials said on Thursday. The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory...

A 51 year old agriculture teacher in both high school and primary school, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for paying students between 15,000 and 20,000 colones to have sex with him. The sentence was handed down in a Bribri, Talamanca, court in Limon province. The judges extended defendant Jorge Alberto Conejo's preventive detention for another six months while his sentence is automatically ...

By Irene Klotz Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:09pm EST (Reuters) - A large asteroid that flies in nearly the same orbit as Earth will make a close pass by the planet, but there's no chance of an impact - at least for hundreds of years, astronomers said on Wednesday. The asteroid, named Toutatis, flies by Earth every four years. During its closest approach on Wednesda...

By Irene Klotz Wed Dec 12, 2012 5:47pm EST CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., December 12 - Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found seven galaxies that formed relatively shortly after the universe's birth some 13.7 billion years ago, scientists said on Wednesday, describing them "as baby pictures of the universe." One of the objects may be the oldest g...

LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:17pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found the earliest evidence of prehistoric cheese-making from a study of 7,500-year-old pottery fragments that are perforated just like modern cheese strainers. Milk production and dairy processing allowed early farmers to produce food without slaughtering precious livestock, and mak...

LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:03pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - A copy of The Ten Commandments dating back two millennia and the earliest written Gaelic are just two of a number of incredibly rare manuscripts now freely available online to the world as part of a Cambridge University digital project. The Nash Papyrus -- one of the oldest known manuscripts contain...

By Irene Klotz Tue Dec 11, 2012 7:50pm EST (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket carrying a small robotic space shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Tuesday for the third flight in a classified military test program. The 196-foot (60-meter) rocket blasted off at 1:03 p.m. ET (1603 GMT) carrying the military's original X-...

By Jason McLure Tue Dec 11, 2012 5:43pm EST (Reuters) - Researchers have named a newly discovered, prehistoric lizard "Obamadon gracilis" in honor of the 44th president's toothy grin. The small, insect-eating lizard was first discovered in eastern Montana in 1974, but a recent re-examination showed the fossil had been wrongly classified as a Leptochamops ...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:52pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist who urged people to "be curious" in the Paralympics opening ceremony, has landed the richest prize in science for his work on how black holes emit radiation. Wheelchair-bound Hawking won $3 million from Russian Internet entrepreneur ...

If you are building a house in Costa Rica and want birds to come, don't make the same mistake that developers of Sabana Park in western San Jose made in the last century: make sure the trees you plant are native. After non-native trees were chopped and native species replaced them, some 20 bird species who evidently had felt slighted, have returned -- in a big way, reports La Nacion. The vis...

GAINESVILLE, FL - Calypso Blue, a giant leatherback from Panama, finished in first place in Sea Turtle Conservancy's (STC) annual Tour de Turtles Migration Marathon. Calypso Blue, sponsored by Atlantis Paradise Island, swam 3,268 miles in 97 days. Tour de Turtles is a three-month-long, online sea turtle migration-tracking marathon. This year, audiences followed the migration of fifteen turtles ...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:30am EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Almost 40 years to the day after the Apollo 17 crew snapped the famed "blue marble" image of Earth floating in space on December 7, 1972, NASA has unveiled "black marble" video views of the planet by night. The cloud-free pictures, taken with a high-resolution vis...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:23pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Asteroids and comets colliding with the moon not only pitted its surface but also severely fractured its crust, researchers with NASA said on Wednesday, in a finding that could help crack a Martian puzzle. On Mars, similar fracturing would have given water on the ...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:13pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Startup rocket company Space Exploration Technologies, which flies NASA cargo to the International Space Station, has landed its first launch contracts for the U.S. military, the company said on Wednesday. The U.S. Air Force will pay $97 million for a Falcon 9 roc...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 9:11pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA plans to follow up its Mars rover Curiosity mission with a duplicate rover that could collect and store samples for return to Earth, the agency's lead scientist said on Tuesday. The new rover will use spare parts and engineering models developed for Curiosity...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:03pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers have found what could be the earliest known dinosaur to walk the Earth lurking in the corridors of London's Natural History Museum. A mysterious fossil specimen that has been in the museum's collection for decades has now been identified as most likely coming from...