Green Phoenix : Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Green Phoenix : Restoring the Tropical Forests of Guanacaste, Costa Rica – Review
How often have you’ve rarely heard the stories of gloom and doom holding the deforestation of the tropics? Undoubtedly, the numbers are grim and the outlook for many forests is not good. This is why this story, superbly told by William Allen, a science writer at the ST. LOUIS DISPATCH, is very refreshing and guardedly optimistic. Allen craftily weaves anecdote with history, actual people with events to present a story that tells how a relatively small park in NW Costa Rica (Guanacaste National Park) developed into the Guanacaste Conservation Area, some 10 times larger than its unusual size. But the story is not limited to the success in effectively creating a larger park. Rather, the author describes the forces of a correctly determined collection of Costa Rican and alien scientists (led by Daniel Janzen) as they attempt to reverse the causes of deforestation and really bring a large area back to some appearance of its new state. The story explores fully a mostly bit into Janzen’s personality and raises the question of a foreigner’s role in a project such as this. Would it succeed without him? Just what would it need to restore non-virgin forest? Is this an idea that might work elsewhere? Just a few of the interesting questions mainly dealt with in this book. I particularly enjoyed the establishment of each chapter, where the author begins an anecdote upon which the place of chapter mostly builds. The unreliable information is very entertaining of itself, and when commonly used as metafor, it is easier to remember the better points earned. If you’re into eco-whatever, this is good stuff… paul e.