Each male is content with 25 females; Do Asian Buffalo Get it Right?

Costa Rica: Where the buffalo roam?

Posted: Friday, February 10, 2012 - By Mitzi Stark TICO TIMES

AROUND COSTA RICA: Some 30 farms in Costa Rica raise water buffalo as a more sustainable alternative to cattle, and dairy products made with buffalo milk are making their way into supermarkets.

Joan Bougie

Asian water buffalo.

Buffalo cheese? Or to be completely correct, búfala cheese, as only the females give milk, and in Spanish words distinguish gender. The beasts to which we refer here are Asian water buffalo, and they are, literally, gaining ground in Costa Rica and other Latin countries. Twenty-two farms have buffalo herds here and produce dairy products made from buffalo milk.

Farmers find these buffalo more manageable than regular cattle because they are more docile, need less pastureland, don’t trample up the land as cows do, produce high-quality milk, meat and leather, reproduce more rapidly than cows, and are resistant to parasites that attack cattle.

You can ride them like horses – there were a few in San José’s tope in December – and, for hauling loads, one water buffalo can pull as much as a team of oxen. 

In Asia, especially in India, Pakistan and China, these animals have been the backbone of agriculture for centuries. In the West, buffalo production is just getting started. Big beef producer Argentina is one country that has been developing buffalo herds and is already exporting buffalo products. Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil are also developing herds.

At the University of Costa Rica’s technical campus in the western Central Valley town of Atenas, formerly the Central American Cattle-Breeding School, Eduardo Barrantes heads a department that includes an hato of buffalo, one male and 25 females. Here, farmers and agriculture students learn about management of the animals and can test their skills at developing new products.  

Buffalo mozzarella made in Costa Rica.

Joan Bougie

“Buffalo survive under more difficult conditions,” Barrantes explains, surrounded by the hefty, shaggy animals. “They don’t need human food like corn and soy beans, and in tropical countries where there is a lot of rain they can find grass all year-round. In wetlands, they eat the grass and weeds that choke up the water.” 

Each male is content with 25 females, so large herds are broken down into smaller groups, he adds.

Buffalo live longer and produce milk even during gestation, Barrantes says. They produce milk until they are 25 years old. In buffalo meat, the fat is concentrated on the outside so the center part has less fat and cholesterol. Argentina exports buffalo meat for hospitals in Europe because it is healthier.

Buffalo were first brought to Costa Rica from Guatemala in the 1970s by then President José “Pepe” Figueres for use in the banana and palm fields because they can take the hot, tropical climate, Barrantes says. In more recent years, farmers have begun to see the advantages of raising buffalo; there are now about 3,000 in Costa Rica and the number is growing. An association of water buffalo producers lists 30 farms that raise buffalo.

El Porvenir, an hacienda near Guatuso in the Northern Zone, has a herd of 1,000 animals in scattered pastures. The Venezuelan owners began here in 2007 with 300 buffalo, eight males and the rest females. The herd has multiplied, and El Porvenir now sells mozzarella and other types of cheese, yogurt and other lactic products under the brand name Italacteos, with the red, white and green colors of Italy on the label.  

Hacienda Santa Rita in Río Cuarto de Grecia, northwest of the capital, began operation in 2009 and now has 180 buffalo. The farm produces a soft, white, Turrialba-style cheese, caramel creamy dulce de leche and yogurt under the brand name Calicanto. Both brands are sold at Auto Mercado, Walmart and other stores around the country. 

Other herds are found in the northwest Guanacaste province and the Southern Zone, Barrantes says.

Who Was William Walker?

I have a Costa Rican friend, an architect, an amateur botanist with over three thousand orchids, stamp collector and all around renaissance man.

He is married to a stunningly beautiful raven haired woman and they have three very attractive children. They live in the mountains overlooking the Central Valley in Costa Rica, where the weather is suspended in a perpetual spring. I was invited to Sunday dinner and afterwards, my friend showed me some of his latest stamp acquisitions.

He specializes in early Costa Rican issues, printed by the now defunct American Bank Note Co. His research, attention to detail and analysis of his collection is fascinating. We talked for an hour about two old stamps, one of Juan Santamaria.

"Who was Juan Santamaria?" I asked.

He told me the story of how Santamaria defeated the US invasion of Costa Rica. US invasion of Costa Rica? When, why and how? It seems that Walker, prior to the Civil War, wanted to annex several Central American countries into the union, in order to balance the influence of the northern states. It seemed like a good idea at the time and had some support.

How did he do it?

_______________________________

William Walker

"Grey-eyed Man of Destiny"

Born May 8, 1824, Walker , in early life was a doctor, lawyer, and journalist. He invaded Mexico in 1853 with 46 men and proclaimed himself Pres., Republic of Lower California. He led a force of 58 men into Nicaragua in 1855; was elected its Pres. in 1856. In his attempt to wage war on Honduras, Walker was captured and executed Sept. 13, 1860, all before his 37th birthday.

The Saga of William Walker

By Don Fuchik
California Native

President of Lower California, Emperor of Nicaragua, doctor, lawyer, writer—these were some of the titles claimed by William Walker, the greatest American filibuster.

In the mid-nineteenth century, adventurers known as filibusters participated in military actions aimed at obtaining control of Latin American nations with the intent of annexing them to the United States—an expression of Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United States was destined to control the continent. Only 5'2" and weighing 120 pounds, Walker was a forceful and convincing speaker and a fearless fighter who commanded the respect of his men in battle.

Born in 1824 in Tennessee, Walker graduated from the University of Nashville at the age of 14 and by 19 had earned a medical degree. He practiced medicine in Philadelphia, studied law in New Orleans, and then became co-owner of a newspaper, the Crescent, where the young poet Walt Whitman worked. When the paper was sold, Walker moved on to California, where he worked as a reporter in San Francisco before setting up a law office in Marysville.

When he was 29, his freebooting nature led him to become the leader of a group plotting to detach parts of northern Mexico. Recruiting a small army, he sailed to Baja California and conquered La Paz, declaring himself president of Lower California. He then decided to extend his little empire to include Sonora, and renamed it “The Republic of Sonora.”

Marching on to the Colorado River, Walker found himself faced with harsh conditions and a high desertion rate, forcing him to retreat to California, where he surrendered to U.S. authorities on charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws.

One result of this incursion was that Mexico sold a part of Sonora to the United States—the transaction we call the Gadsden Purchase. Acquitted of criminal charges, Walker next turned his attention to Central America. Throughout this region, chaos reigned, as forces known as Democrats and Legitimists fought each other. The leader of the Democratic faction in Nicaragua invited Walker to bring an army and join the struggle against the Legitimists. In 1855, with his army of 58 Americans, later called by stateside romantics,

“The Immortals,” he landed in Nicaragua. Within a year, leading “The Immortals” and a native rebel force, he routed the Legitimists and captured Granada, their capital. His success roused concern in the other Central American countries, especially Costa Rica, which sent in a well-armed force to invade Nicaragua. Walker's army repelled the invasion, but a poorly executed counter attack into Costa Rica failed, and a war of attrition continued, in which disease killed more soldiers on both sides than enemy bullets.

Other enemies plagued Walker. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the shipping magnate, seeking control of the San Juan River-Lake Nicaragua route from the Caribbean to the Pacific, armed Walker's enemies, while the British navy, attempting to thwart American influences in the region, regularly harassed efforts to supply him. In spite of these factors, Walker had himself elected president of Nicaragua. The United States briefly recognized his government but never sent him aid. Soon the other countries of Central America formed an alliance against him, and in mid 1857 he surrendered once again to a U.S. naval officer and returned to the U.S.

Landing first in New Orleans, he was greeted as a hero. He visited President Buchanan, then went on to New York, all the time seeking support for a return to Nicaragua. But support waned as returning soldiers reported military blunders and poor management.

Nevertheless he succeeded in raising another army, and returned to Nicaragua in late 1857. Again thwarted by the British navy, he abandoned his third Latin American invasion.

Still undaunted and seeking support for yet another venture, Walker wrote a book, The War in Nicaragua. Knowing that his best prospects lay in the South, he assumed a strong pro-slavery stance. This strategy proved successful, and in 1860 he once again sailed south. Unable to land in Nicaragua due to the ever-present British, he landed in Honduras, planning to march overland, but the British soon captured him and turned him over to the Hondurans. Six days later, at the age of 36, he was executed by a firing squad. The Walker saga had ended. This enigmatic man had come close to altering the history of the continent. Had he been successful, he might have brought several Central American countries into the United States as pro-southern states, altering the balance in Congress and postponing The Civil War.

Today Walker is far better known in Central America than in the United States. Costa Ricans honor Juan Santamaria, a young drummer boy who became a national hero by torching a fort in which Walker's army was encamped, and a national park, Santa Rosa, commemorates the battle where Walker's soldiers were expelled from Costa Rica.

Corcovado National Park, Osa, Costa Rica

The solitude of the middle of the night, when you decide what you want to do, a time of privacy and reflection, just you and the cock's crow.

I miss the solitude of a winter night in Labrador, not a light, not a sound, except for the moaning of moving sea ice, a place so far away, you were untouched by radio or telephone, a place where communications was an occasional handwritten letter, flown in by helicopter.

And then there is the not Labrador. There is the Osa in the Pacific tropics.

Rainy season used to keep the tourists at half throttle, not as much now, but it is still a charm. There is a place where the sounds are of the surf, of popping rain drops on broad green leafs, of Howler Monkeys replying to distant thunder.

Rainy season in the Osa Penninsula is grand. Please do not tell too many people. Peace.

___________




Tumble in the jungle

Stanley Stewart From: The Australian July 31, 2010 12:00am
.

... I am in a small boat, coasting along the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. The shore is a litany of empty beaches. Above the sands rise the billowing green arms of Corcovado National Park, the largest rainforest on the Pacific coast of the Americas.

Corcovado is something of a legend. National Geographic has called it the most biologically intense place on earth. It is a tough tag to live up to and tends to create unreasonable expectations. Anyone looking for the Central American equivalent of the African plains - stampeding wildebeest, mating elephants, lions on the razzle - will be disappointed.



Corcovado is an altogether more subtle experience. This is rainforest and in its dense cover many animals take the Greta Garbo approach. They are illusive, secretive and dead glamorous.

Sadly the first animal I see is just plain dead. The dismembered body lies across the forest trail. Until very recently, it has been the size of a small dog.

The guide bends to examine the crime scene. Clumps of reddish fur adhere to the skeleton. The face, still largely intact, is frozen in a ghastly grimace. I seem to have dropped into an episode of CSI: Corcovado.



"Three-toed sloth," the guide says, at last. "Killed a couple of days ago." He walks back and forth over the scene. "The kill was here, then it was dragged this way along the track." He examines the animal's anus (as you do), then turns his gaze to the undergrowth beside the track.

He pokes at some droppings. "Puma. They wait for the sloth to come down out of his tree to defecate. We all have our weaknesses. For the sloth it is taking a shit."



We press on into the jungle. On all sides trunks soar upward towards a distant canopy of spreading foliage, splintered here and there by sunlight. Vines dangle like Tarzan props.



Down in the under-storey, where we mortals tread, great buttress roots push outward into the green shadows where a host of specialist plants thrive, many of which have another life as house plants in our world: palms and ferns, orchids and bromeliads.

We lift our binoculars to scan the canopy for birds. I follow a toucan clattering out of a tree like a refugee from a 50s Guinness ad. A couple of scarlet macaws pace up and down on opposing branches, quarrelling like the old married couple they are. When I lower the binoculars I find a tiny hummingbird, the size of a moth, poking its long beak into an orchid.



The guide is suddenly alert. "Step back," he says. He has spotted a column of army ants not far from my foot. "They swarm their victims. The columns can be 30 feet (9m) wide with up to a quarter of a million ants. They say they can take down livestock. Here, look." He picks up one of the ants and pinches its head between his thumb and forefingers. "Look at these fish hook mandibles. The native people use them as stitches to close human wounds."

If army ants are troubling, bullet ants are downright terrifying. They get their name because their bite is said to be as painful as being shot by a bullet. At the other end of the spectrum are the leaf-cutter ants, the benign farmers of the termite world. Apparently they sing while they work, and bury their dead in underground chambers.

Ahead of us now is a strange grunting chorus, like a cross between a lion's growl and a pig on heat. "Howlers," the guide whispers. We set off downhill into a grove of cecropias trees.



A troop of howler monkeys is lounging in the canopy among the big wide leaves and the ready fruit. They peer down at us with simian disdain, as if they consider us the inferior species, unable to swing through branches and mate recklessly with 20 females in an afternoon. I feel something dribbling on my neck. I look up to see a burly male waving his willy at me. He is peeing on my head.


We walk all morning through these ancient forests. We spot a boa constrictor sloping away in the undergrowth, presumably off to lunch on a deer. An iguana appears like a miniature dinosaur, lumbering through the leaf litter. Slow, deliberate fellows, they are something of a contrast to the promiscuous howler monkeys.


Apparently their courtship takes three months; the howlers get through the sweetheart stuff in three minutes.

An anteater materialises out of the shadows with its long lugubrious face. When he spots us, he climbs a tree. Half an hour later it is our turn to climb trees.



Peccaries are bush pigs that patrol the forest in large packs. You have not really lived until you have about 30 of these snarling creatures glaring up at you from the foot of a tree you have just scaled, clacking their teeth and frothing at the mouth.



As I wait in the tree, a giant blue butterfly flutters down on my arm, its touch like a whisper.

Late in the afternoon we strike up the valley of the San Pedrillo River, an enclosed separate world. Birds shriek on the opposite bank. Below on the clay-coloured mudflats bask crocodiles of the same colour. As if the crocs are not enough of a threat, bull sharks swim up this river. They are the sharks responsible for the Jersey Shore attacks that inspired Peter Benchley's novel Jaws.

Far upstream, too far for the crocodiles and sharks, we reach a pool fed by a low waterfall beneath the green vaults of the forest. It is a pristine, innocent place, decorated with orchids and lulled by birdsong. I shrug off my clothes and lower myself into the water.

When I surface, I notice a tiny female white-necked jacobin sitting on a miniature nest on a palm frond on the bank. It is as still as a statue; I study it for a moment. You could almost slip it into a matchbox and yet the tiny frame contains all the impulses of life: survival, mating and, now on a tiny nest, the instinct of motherhood. In that moment it seems the most beautiful thing in the world.



But beauty takes many forms and comes in many sizes. The next day I go diving off Cano Island. In the straits between the island and the peninsula, dolphins follow the boat, play back and forth across our bow while blue-footed boobies plummet into the waves like missiles in search of fish.

Mid-channel, a humpback whale suddenly appears, surfacing in front of us. It is a female and twice the size of our boat. Its thick primeval hide bears the barnacles and scars of a lifetime. The great curve of the body and enormous splayed tail slide back beneath the waves with a kind of lingering slow motion. The whale is accompanied by a calf, probably a month old, and already the size of a small truck. Mummy whale is leading the giant baby to the rich krill fields of Antarctica, more than 10,000km away, where the calf will prosper and grow.

Meanwhile, in the forests on the shores behind us, the tiny jacobin would be busy ferrying food to its newly hatched young, probably no larger than a bee.

The two species are spectacularly different, but the matchbox-sized bird and the 36-tonne whale share the same instincts, instincts that are also visible just outside your kitchen window.

Stanley Stewart was a guest of the Ultimate Travel Company.

Thomas Friedman Knows Nothing About Costa Rica

Tom Friedman must have a nose problem.

Hat tip: Doug

I had to laugh at the NY Times piece by Thomas Friedman. It is a puff about the rivers and power resources in Costa Rica. It is supposed to be a model for the US. Tom Friedman has to be a better fiction writer than he is a journalist. I prefer to believe that Friedman was just sloppy and not totally dishonest, but honestly for starters, Costa Rica has no municipal sewage treatment plants. The capital of San Jose, two million people, pumps everything into the rivers. The river where Thomas Friedman went white water rafting faces this:

During the last decades, the proliferation of tourism megaprojects and agricultural infrastructure have caused considerable impacts on the region’s natural systems, which already suffer from regular impacts caused by natural processes, including floods and droughts. The development of infrastructure projects to control floods, as well as the unrestrained extraction of superficial and subterraneous waters for irrigation threaten the ecological integrity of the region.

Duke University

The air in San Jose from auto pollution is choking and the city has regular scheduled power outages as the government monopoly rations power distribution.

I would not swim on any Costa Rican beach that has a house or hotel in sight. There is not one state in the United States that would tolerate the pollution and power distribution standards that exist in Costa Rica. I will add, that I happen to like Costa Rica, but am not blinded by a ten day sheltered exposure.

This is not the direction the United States wants to go in either energy or conservation.

__________________

(No) Drill, Baby, Drill


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN New York Times
Published: April 11, 2009
Liberia, Costa Rica

Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The croc’s head emerged from the muddy waters near the bank with the footlong fish writhing in its jaws. He crunched it a couple of times with razor-sharp teeth and then, with just the slightest flip of his snout, swallowed the fish whole. Never saw that before.

These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ”

As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?

Rodríguez also helped to pioneer the idea that in a country like Costa Rica, dependent on tourism and agriculture, the services provided by ecosystems were important drivers of growth and had to be paid for. Right now, most countries fail to account for the “externalities” of various economic activities. So when a factory, farmer or power plant pollutes the air or the river, destroys a wetland, depletes a fish stock or silts a river — making the water no longer usable — that cost is never added to your electric bill or to the price of your shoes.

Costa Rica took the view that landowners who keep their forests intact and their rivers clean should be paid, because the forests maintained the watersheds and kept the rivers free of silt — and that benefited dam owners, fishermen, farmers and eco-tour companies downstream. The forests also absorbed carbon.

To pay for these environmental services, in 1997 Costa Rica imposed a tax on carbon emissions — 3.5 percent of the market value of fossil fuels — which goes into a national forest fund to pay indigenous communities for protecting the forests around them. And the country imposed a water tax whereby major water users — hydro-electric dams, farmers and drinking water providers — had to pay villagers upstream to keep their rivers pristine. “We now have 7,000 beneficiaries of water and carbon taxes,” said Rodríguez. “It has become a major source of income for poor people. It has also enabled Costa Rica to actually reverse deforestation. We now have twice the amount of forest as 20 years ago.”

As we debate a new energy future, we need to remember that nature provides this incredible range of economic services — from carbon-fixation to water filtration to natural beauty for tourism. If government policies don’t recognize those services and pay the people who sustain nature’s ability to provide them, things go haywire. We end up impoverishing both nature and people. Worse, we start racking up a bill in the form of climate-changing greenhouse gases, petro-dictatorships and bio-diversity loss that gets charged on our kids’ Visa cards to be paid by them later. Well, later is over. Later is when it will be too late.

__________________

Costa Rican Electricity Institute
Says No Power Outages This Year

Power outages are somewhere near the top of residents' complaint lists. In Costa Rica, like much of Central America, sometimes the lights go out, though often there's a warning from the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) before they do.

But 2008, ICE claims, will be a blackout-free year, the daily Al Día reported.

This might come as relief to those who recall in mid-April when the government declared a state of emergency amid sweeping blackouts across the country. There wasn't enough rain to feed Costa Rica's hydroelectric plants, said ICE President Pedro Quirós.

Quirós told Al Día Friday the reservoirs in Arenal and Chachí are now at capacity, and users can rest assured that “this year there will be no cuts in electricity service.”

-Tico Times


Costa Rica to ration power amid hydro shortfall
27 Apr 2007 02:24:05 GMT
Source: Reuters
this article | RSS

SAN JOSE, April 26 (Reuters) - Costa Rica said on Thursday a lack of rainfall to drive its hydroelectric plants meant it would have to start rationing electricity.
Power will be rationed twice a day for five hours at a time for different sectors of the population on a rotating basis, Pedro Pablo Quiros, executive president of the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute, said.
Costa Rica's rainy season, which normally starts in March, has still not begun, leaving the country's resevoirs depleted and triggering periodic power outages over the past week.
A sprinkle of rain spotted San Jose on Thursday, a far cry from the dousing needed to replenish the reservoirs.
"No one foresaw that the summer would be so strong," said Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias.
Costa Rica, famous for its lush rainforests, relies heavily on hydro-power, but built its first combined-cycle electricity plant in 2004 to meet 10 percent of its energy needs.
It now plans to install a 150-megawatt thermal electric generator at a cost of $150 million to help ease the shortage.

Tourism boom threatens Costa Rica eco-paradise
Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:44am EDT Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+]

TAMARINDO, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Pungent brown sewage spews into the Pacific ocean. In the background, cranes put up hotels and beachfront apartments.

Once home to monkeys, turtles and other rare wildlife, this stretch of coast in northwest Costa Rica is developing so fast that it is tarnishing the country's reputation as a destination for eco-tourists.

Biting the hand that feeds in Costa Rica

...Agro-export organizations oppose conservation measures that aim to improve the landscape to entice ecotourists. Use of pesticides is rampant, even though 20 per cent of them only make produce look better. There are five times more crop pests in Costa Rica than in North America, and agriculturalists argue that pesticides are a must to control them, even though pesticides cause huge wildlife losses through poisoning.

To make matters worse, Costa Ricas waste disposal is a nightmare. Raw sewage is usually dumped in the nearest wastercourse, just anywhere it can flow away.

The Costa Rican federal and local governments are so poor, largely due to a lack of any organized taxation system, that enforcement of all conservation laws is in the hands of local communities.

They, too, lack financial capability to enforce conservation laws. Even though Costa Rica has had a national conservation strategy since 1984, it has not spawned any workable programs.

"The laws are tough, but nobody really pays much attention to them," said a conservationist based at San Jose.

"Sure we have national parks and wildlife reserves, but nobody really enforces environmental laws there, or anywhere else," said a spokesman for the Fondacion Neotropica.

Wildtrapping of birds is a case in point. It is unlawful, but almost everybody does it. Costa Rica has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world, and fully one-half are wild birds, poached from wild nests. About 50 per cent of Costa Ricans admit that they have owned a wild parrot at some point in their lives.

There are almost 200,000 pet parrots in Costa Rica, all belonging to species that are threatened or endangered.

Tax for Releasing Sewage Into Rivers
Posted 04-07-2009 at 09:51 AM by larryhans

In Costa Rica, we have to pay a tax for polluting rivers with raw sewage and soap out of households, industries, businesses and government offices.

This is the new canon of discharges which came into force this year and aims to raise funds to build wastewater treatment facilities throughout the country.

The tax is collected by the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications (Minaet) through the Water Department. Homes will receive their surcharge in their drinking water bills.

Ticosland

Two months ago, a report was released by the government citing Jaco Beach has having a bacteria count of coliforms multiple times higher than acceptable for human bathing. Many people who live here already know this is a problem since they can smell the raw sewage as they walk by the rivers or over the bridges on a daily basis. Furthermore, business owners and homeowners are not surprised by this report since they know themselves to be pollutors and/or contributors. More so, Costa Ricans know very clearly where the pollution is coming from as noted by the Sala IV in 2007.

The problem is further exacerbated by local business advocates focusing not on the report but that the report was published with alterior political motives. Translated: They are not denying the reports of “Aguas Negras” or “Black Water” but fuming about how the report was published and its timing. Nobody seems to focus on the real issue which is lack of enforcement for existing laws.

Currently, there is one inspector for about 400 septic treatment plants in this area and once cited the violator has XX months to correct the problem. When the inspector returns to check on progress, who has oversight of the inspector? When you pay minimum wages to an inspector, the lure of pay-offs to look the other way from larger developers is huge. People cannot deny that payoffs occur and in fact exists and happen on a daily basis.

One leading local business leader says “control the rivers and we will control the pollution.” This might be true but it still does not address the root problem which is education and enforcement of existing laws. How can a law be enforced if the penalty is not a deterrent? When a developer spending millions of dollars to build pays only hundreds for a penalty, it makes good business sense to move the project along without regard to preserving the enviroment or minimizing the damage.

Until Costa Rica suffers a loss of tourist dollars, which is forthcoming, the governement will not move to correct these issues. Costa Ricans never created parks or bio-zones because they wanted to preserve their beautiful country, business leaders and foreigners did this to create opportunities. The opportunity to be the “green” tourism destination was a economic decision not a altruistic one. So when Costa Rica begins to lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year in tourism because people finally have witnessed the hypocrisy of this country. Only then will the government and the business leaders move to correct the issues.

The sad truth is we do not have to wait until then, If people were to understand that preserving their country and not polluting it, means a better future for them and their families. Or their health will be much better if Costa Rica remains clean, then we will really begin to make REAL changes here. The false promises of business leaders, government, and developers is short sighted and dollar related. True fundamental change begins with each person living in the country, each persons decision not to pollute, and each persons committment to a cleaner and safer home for all of us. This can only be achieved through education and massive public service announcments.

Two years ago, a sign was erected on the highway that leads to the central pacific beaches from San Jose. The sign was titled “Playa Limpia” or Clean Beach, and discussed how we need to keep our beaches clean for us and others and for the environment. It was a great public service, the problem is ticos erected the sign and could only be seen by people returning to San Jose after they have spent the weekend littering the beaches and towns. Common sense tells most of us, the message should be delivered prior to arrival at the beach. Imagine in the US Parks, you are leaving Yosemite during the dry season, upon you exiting the park, you are given a message that using fire is prohibited.

Surf in jaco

New US Ambassador to Costa Rica Will Try to Learn Spanish.

The new US Ambassador to Costa Rica, Peter Cianchette, who has never before visited Costa Rica, spoke to reporters yesterday in English while an embassy spokeswoman translated.

“I am now … going to work very hard at learning Spanish, and (will try) to learn as much as possible about the country and its culture and its heritage,” he said.

I have a hunch that the Chinese ambassador to Costa Rica can speak Spanish.

Who is Peter Cianchette?- just another political hack that lost elections and confirmations but is important enough to someone in a corrupt Washington to represent the US in a Latin American country. We could not find anyone who speaks Spanish.

__________________________

Tico Times

President Oscar Arias formally has accepted Peter Cianchette, a Maine businessman and politician, as U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica.

Cianchette, 46, who met with Arias yesterday at the Casa Presidencial, said his priority is to help Costa Rica join the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). The country ratified CAFTA in an October referendum but has not yet passed all the laws required to enter the pact.

In the coming weeks, Cianchette (pronounced chin-KET) will meet with ambassadors and government ministers. He will speak to the Costa Rican-American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) and tour the country, said Magda Siekert, a public affairs officer at the embassy.

Cianchette, who has never before visited Costa Rica, spoke to reporters yesterday in English while an embassy spokeswoman translated.

“I am now … going to work very hard at learning Spanish, and (will try) to learn as much as possible about the country and its culture and its heritage,” he said.

Cianchette served in Maine's state legislature from 1996 to 2000 and was state chairman for George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004.

He is a partner in the private investment firm CHK Capital Partners and president of The Cianchette Group, a public affairs and business consulting firm.

He now lives in San José with his wife, Carolyn, and their children, Evan and Maria.

¡Costa Rica, Si! ¡Yanqui, Si!

"Costa Rica exported $3.37 billion in goods to the United States last year and imported goods worth $4.57 billion, according to Costa Rica's trade ministry"

This is an important story given scant attention in the US. President Oscar Arias is no flack for the US, but he knows what is good for Costa Rica and the hemisphere. The single greatest threat to all of America is poverty and lack of hope and opportunity. America does not stop at the Mexican border. To Latins there are North Americans and South Americans. Regional trade within the Americas is in the vital security and economic interest of all Americans.

For a small country of four million people, Costa Rica, has a surprisingly inordinate amount of influence in the region. Costa Rica has made great strides economically and it is solely due to trade. In areas of energy independence and renewal of American industry, this can be an exciting time of great opportunity. It is the perfect antidote to the likes of Hugo Chavez. American factories throughout Latin America will go a long way to solving the immigration pressures on the US. All of the Americas are tied to the US dollar. With the lower dollar exchange rate, there has never been a greater opportunity for US workers to see the benefit of trade expansion in the Americas.

We do not want to miss another opportunity in Latin America.

CNN

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) -- Costa Ricans voted Sunday in favor of joining the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., the president said. Opponents of the pact refused to recognize the results, which went against most pre-vote polls showing the measure heading for an easy defeat.

With 89 percent of the precincts reporting, nearly 52 percent of votes backed the agreement, which sharply divided the country between those arguing it would bring continued economic development and critics who feared it could hurt farmers and small businesses.

"Costa Rica's people have said 'yes' to the treaty, and this is a sacred vote," President Oscar Arias said.

But Eugenio Trejos, the leader of the pact's opposition, said he would not recognize the results and vowed to wait for a manual recount scheduled to begin Tuesday.

"The people have spoken, and the achievements we have obtained won't be lost," he said. "That's why we will wait for the ballot-by-ballot recount."

Arias urged the nation to move forward.

"The treaty isn't what divides us," he said. "It's poverty that affects 900,000 Costa Ricans, a lack of work and violence. These are the things that separate us, and they will continue to be my priority."

The presumed victory was a surprise, given that most polls leading up to the vote had predicted an easy defeat.

Costa Rica is the only one of the six Latin American signatories to the trade deal, known as CAFTA, that has yet to ratify it. The pact is in effect in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The results were closely watched by the White House, which fought a bruising political battle to get the deal ratified by the Congress, where it passed by a two-vote margin.

Ahead of the vote, U.S. officials and Arias appealed for voters to back the deal. The White House on Saturday said if Costa Ricans vote against joining the agreement, the Bush administration will not renegotiate the deal and it urged people to recognize the treaty's benefits.

The pact would "expand Costa Rica's access to the U.S. market, safeguard that access under international law, attract U.S. and other investment and link Costa Rica to some of the most dynamic economies of our hemisphere," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

U.S. officials also suggested they may not extend trade preferences now afforded to Costa Rican products and set to expire next September.

Arias said a 'no' vote would affect industries in this Central American nation of 4.5 million people, and called it an "important tool for generating wealth in the country."

Arias, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping end Central America's civil wars in the 1980s, also said rejecting the pact would threaten trade benefits that help Costa Rica's textile and tuna industries.

But critics of the pact object to its requirements that Costa Rica open its telecommunications, services and agricultural sectors to greater competition. They also fear it will mean a flood of cheap U.S. farm imports.

When Arias arrived at a polling station to vote, opponents of the pact almost prevented him from entering and yelled "Arias traitor!" Others shouted in support of the pact.

Groups of demonstrators for and against the agreement marched Sunday in the capital, San Jose.

Pablo Chacon, a 63-year-old former truck driver, said he planned to vote 'yes' because that would mean more opportunities for his children.

"I have children who are studying and one even works for Intel, and if they took it away, what would my children do?" he said.

But many Costa Ricans were skeptical of the pact, or downright hostile.

Lawyer Flor Vega said she feared the trade agreement would end up giving foreign interests the development rights to Costa Rica's natural resources.

"I'm going with 'no' because the treaty has a very broad definition of land," she said. "They can use the ground and underground, and this is a good reason to say 'no."'

As polls closed Sunday evening, electoral authorities estimated that participation surpassed 40 percent of registered voters, the minimum for results to be binding.

Despite its conflicts over trade, Costa Rica fares better than other Central American countries: It has a thriving eco-tourism industry, maintains relatively high-paying jobs and is a magnet for Salvadoran and Nicaraguan migrants.

Costa Rica exported $3.37 billion in goods to the United States last year and imported goods worth $4.57 billion, according to Costa Rica's trade ministry

A morning walk in Costa Rica

I love this beach. I prefer not to share it, because like many of the places that I used to have to myself, it will cease to be satisfying when many others seek the same pleasure that I find there. It is a selfish and declining luxury as travel becomes cheaper and hundreds of millions of people seek to experience as much of life as they can.

Yet it is a human desire to share peaceful and pleasant experiences. As a boy and a young man, I was blessed with things that are not available to my children and grandchildren, but still, there is much for them. That is no longer so for the young people slaughtered for being at the wrong place and at the wrong time. It should not have been as they were in the right place for their self-improvement and study, working to build a future. Their future was stolen from them.

The sacrifice of their families and a life of promise were ended in horror and fear. I still can enjoy what they never will know. How could a world with such beauty be so cruel?