Originally published in 2016
If you have seen the film Stranded you will know how vulnerable life is in the Children’s Eternal Rainforest. It is like an island of forest in a sea of pastures. Some of the iconic species of the Children’s Eternal Rainforest need to migrate seasonally down the slope to the Pacific to follow the ripening fruit. But many of the patches of forest are too far apart for them to make it and each year fewer and fewer bellbirds and quetzals return from their migration.
That’s why the Bellbird Biological Corridor has been set up to connect the cloud forest to the mangroves. It is a collaboration between 7 local reserves, universities, and other organizations including Monteverde Conservation League. The Costa Rican Conservation Foundation (FCC) has been running a nursery and planting thousands of trees for years and ACM has helped local farmers plant windbreaks. But now the project has become more ambitious. It is part of a national program to protect corridors throughout the country that connect Nicaragua to Panama. The Bellbird Corridor got a grant from GEF to do a strategic plan for the corridor and held five workshops with leaders throughout its proposed area. They will then help local communities find funding for their own projects that contribute to building the corridor.
