The Children’s Eternal Rainforest
“Don’t touch the hummingbirds,” the sign read, just outside the magical cloudbridge forest at the Colibri cafe. Dozens of jewel-like hummingbirds swarmed the feeders. They were unafraid of people, flying inches from my face. But it was somehow tempting to touch the hummingbird. But restraint was the reason these creatures were here in the first place, and I was incredibly lucky to witness them, like giant bright bees filling the air. Limits and hard work are the reason they remain.
In the 1980’s only 30% of the Costa Rica’s rain forest remained. It was all being logged for lumber and cow pasture.
One day a teacher in Sweden was teaching her student’s about rainforests.
The children asked, ‘Is it true that rainforests are disappearing?’ Yes, said the teacher, “it’s true. ‘But we have to do something about it,’ the children said. Nine-year-old Roland suggested, ‘Why can’t we buy a rainforest?’” (The Children’s Eternal Rainforest - Alive Magazine, 2014)
To the children’s luck, who should visit them next week but the American Biologist Sharon Kinsman from Monteverde, Costa Rica where agricultural development was destroying the last cloud forests in the region. Kinsman showed the children pictures of the forest, and told them stories of the hundreds of birds, animals, insects, and unique plants found there. She lit a spark of imagination.
The children were ecstatic.They set up lemonade stands, they asked their parents, family members, and friends to help them save the rainforest. Within a day they had a couple hundred dollars. Soon fifteen acres were purchased. This small success spread like wildfire turning into a global movement. Children from 44 countries created bake sales, washed cars, help rabbit races, and did anything they could to protect Costa Rica’s rain forest.
Now the “Bosque Eterno de Los Niños” is 56,000 acres strong and growing. These children changed the legacy of the Monteverde region.
Soon locals caught on realizing the incredible value of what they had. Visitors both national and international started flooding in. Even farmers that didn’t care about the forest suddenly had an economic incentive to preserve it, tourist wouldn’t come to a cow field. Now Monteverde is a brilliant, vibrant community full of small businesses.
Costa Rica is now a world model of sustainability. I sometimes wonder how much this is due to nine-year-old Roland’s question: “Why can’t we buy a rainforest?”
Now 60% of the country is forested once again. $500 million has been paid to landowners and farmers over the last 20 years, stewarding 2.4 million acres of rainforest, and incentivizing the planting of 7 million new trees.
What if we acted with the fearlessness of a child? What might we accomplish?