The Beginnings: Costa Rica Eco Tourism, Teddy Roosevelt And The Matterhorn
Like many of life’s greatest accomplishments, it began by accident. It started with one unique man on a desolate and beautiful mountain. The man was Teddy Roosevelt; the Matterhorn was the mountain where an idea that changed our world germinated. Today, we call it “eco tourism” and every year it leads thousands of people to a tiny gem that Christopher Columbus named ‘Costa Rica’ five centuries ago.
About 20 years before he became one of America’s greatest presidents, Roosevelt, always the adventurer, went to Europe to climb the famous Matterhorn Mountain in Switzerland. He was chagrined by what he saw on the mountain or, more accurately, what he did not find.
The mountain was nearly lifeless. Where once there had been many, there were no longer bears, wolves, goats, mountain sheep, or other wilderness creatures. Ghosts of creatures. But only memories.
Although “eco tourism” didn’t get into the language lexicon for practically 100 more years, Theodore Roosevelt was the world’s first eco tourist and, I should point out, the man responsible for today’s eco tourism.
Roosevelt instinctively realized that unless vast tracts of land were preserved, relentless exploitation would ultimately lead to disaster. So, when he was elected President, he did something no one before him had considered. He reserved an extraordinary 230 million as wilderness and parks over massive objections from vested interests, gold miners, timber companies, and robber barons.
President Roosevelt’s wonderful vision led to an extraordinary revelation. The American public will gladly pay to preserve wilderness and wildlife. Sustainability can bring more long-term value to more people than exploitation—in the U.S.
Still, that was America’s experience. How about Costa Rica, a small, developing Central American country that in 1519 its Spanish Governor disdainfully declared to be “the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in all Americas”? By the middle part of the 20th century, the majority of its forests were cut for timber or lost to make farm land and the nation was generally dependent upon the foreign trade of bananas, coffee beans, and other agricultural products for its economic survival. Its future appeared bleak, especially when the world coffee market crashed during the early 1970s.
Now, nothing in the world is predestined and from the economic crisis arose Costa Rica ecotourism. Challenge inevitably breeds opportunity and, in a seemingly unlikely alliance, conservationists and business interests argued that sustainable development needed to be given a chance rather than simply continuing to exploit the country’s rapidly declining resources. The government joined forces with conservationists and businesses and embarked on an ambitious experiment, ultimately setting aside nearly a quarter of the country for parks and preserves over the following years.
By any measure, and in the course of just three decades (about the same amount of time that The Simpsons have been on TV!), the gains have been astonishing. While so many other countries were slashing, clearing, and burning their forests, Costa Rica elected to reforest. At this point, you’ll find 20% more forests as compared with barely 25 years ago. Jaguars, peccaries, and other wildlife are coming back to places in which they have not been spotted for more than a generation. The country seems to have enthusiastically embraced sustained development, refusing to permit off shore drilling for oil and, in its place, have opted to build renewable power resources. Impressively, 99% of its electrical energy now is from hydro-electric plants—and it is starting to install wind turbines as well. Columbia and Yale researchers now rank Costa Rica within the leading five of all environmentally sensitive nations on earth.
From “the poorest and most miserable Spanish colony in Americas” it has vaulted into the #1 position on the Happiest Place in the World Index. The Spanish Governor was dead wrong. Columbus was prescient when he named this place “the rich coast” or “Costa Rica”. And, somewhere in the heavens, Theodore Roosevelt is smiling in delight.
To close, we need to end with the Swiss Matterhorn, the impetus behind Roosevelt’s sudden clarity that parks and preserves were essential to saving wildlife and Costa Rica’s courageous extension of that idea leading to today’s incredibly successful Costa Rica eco tourism. Consider the irony here. Costa Rica is often called the “Switzerland” of the tropics but it learned from Swiss failures. Ironically, Switzerland has learned nothing. Costa Rica’s mountains are today filled with life and eco tourism helps fuel its economy. One of every twenty species of plants and animals on earth are found there. Meanwhile, the magnificent Matterhorn remains silent because its life was exploited and destroyed, not cherished and preserved.
About the writer: Vic Krumm lives in spectacular Costa Rica. Visit his acclaimed website about Costa Rica Vacations and see why Costa Rica Tourism is world-famous.
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