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chapter 19 Conservation and Environmental Education in Rural Northwestern Costa Rica LEARNING THE LESSONS OF A NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION Gordon W. Frankie and S. Bradleigh Vinson It all started with fire! In the late 1970s members of our dry-forest research team were aware that wildfires were becoming common in our general study area between Cañas and Liberia and southwesterly to the Tempisque River in Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica (see maps 1.1 and 1.2 in chapter 1). We also had reason to believe that the risk of fire would increase through time and endanger the remaining plants and wildlife throughout the area. Reasons for our concern included the following. Fire was not a natural phenomenon in the dry forest, and the biota was not adapted to cope with it. Thus, the flora and fauna were extremely vulnerable to fire damage (Frankie et al. 1997) (Our research group had worked in the Tempisque region since 1968, when fires were infrequent and small). Wildfires received their greatest combustible fuel from a fire-adapted exotic African grass, Hyparrhenia rufa, and repeated fires in an area usually led to substantially increased fuel loads of H. rufa, thereby increasing the risk of future and more damaging fires. Moreover, all wildfires were human-caused, and the human population in the region was increasing. Fire was commonly used to “clean” fields and roadsides by local people, and “cleaning” fires often escaped and burned their way into forests, including protected areas. Indifference to escaped fires by most local people and authorities was the rule. We were also aware that these fires could probably be managed with traditional, timeproven methods of prevention and suppression . This view was based on fire experience by one of us (GF), who had previously worked on fire crews for the U.S. Forest Service in several pine forests of northern California. To deal with these fire concerns, a group of five biologists/naturalists (G. Frankie, J. Frankie, L. D. Gomez, W. Haber, and S. B. Vinson) and the National Parks Foundation of Costa Rica began working together in late 1979 to develop a proposal to protect a seasonal dry-forest site, Lomas Barbudal, having unique biological 247 characteristics, which was being threatened by these fires (see map 1.3 in chapter 1). After six years of work, the 2,400-ha site was decreed a biological reserve of the National Park System on 23 January 1986. At that time we had come to believe that our work was finished and that the National Park Service would assume full responsibility for the new addition to the park system. Such was not the case. In fact, local park service officials informed all who had worked on the project that there was neither “interest nor resources ” to care for Lomas Barbudal. Based on this surprising response, three of the reserve founders (GF, JF, and SV) consulted with the National Parks Foundation (private) and quickly reached an agreement to assume responsibility for managing Lomas Barbudal for an indefinite period (not an uncommon practice at that time for individuals or small groups to manage protected government land). Thus, by 1 February 1986 we began our role as land stewards , biodiversity conservationists, promoters, and fund-raisers for the Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve of the National Park System. We also quickly became environmental educators on behalf of the reserve. In this chapter we focus on environmental education (EE) associated with our work at the reserve and vicinity, which lasted from 1986 through 1997. During this 12-year period we developed a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and a wide variety of outreach programs for several different audiences. The goals of this chapter are to 1. describe the main outreach programs and intended audiences; 2. describe major lessons learned from interactions with different audiences and from environmental educators; 3. use selected historical events of our organization and guiding principles of EE from a 1977 UNESCO conference to evaluate the education program we developed; and 4. provide recommendations for future EE programs in rural communities. DEFINITION OF EE In this chapter we use the following definition of EE, which evolved over the period of years from 1969 to 1993 (EPA 1993: 1): “Environmental education is . . . the interdisciplinary process of developing a citizenry that is knowledgeable about the total environment—including both its natural and built aspects—and that has the capacity and the commitment to engage in inquiry, problem-solving, decision-making, and action that will assure...

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