By Josué Picado,
I grew up in a little mountain town in Costa Rica. Despite already having Costa Rican nationals living in it, officially it was not founded until the Quakers came around and gave it its current name, Monteverde. When they came around, very few people were living in Monteverde, no roads existed and it was not yet part of the map. When they settled down, they were the first to notice the green treasure that lay in Monteverde. After discovering this, they went out of their way to preserve the rainforest. As Monteverde grew, the goal of preservation of our local natural sources grew with it.
With many role models within our community, including at the Quaker school I attended, I was mostly involved in ecological projects around town. It was at school where I met one lifelong friend. His mother happened to be the director of the Monteverde Institute whose focus is to study and preserve biodiversity within Monteverde. In addition to my early influence in community service, I did not hesitate when my friend asked me to join the institute and give a hand reforesting the cleared out land surrounding the town.
The Monteverde Institute has an ambitious goal to build a biological bridge that runs from the mountains down to the coast. Along with the help of community members and other neighboring towns, we have slowly worked to reforest cleared out land that was previously for cows and other farmlands. Trees and animals have been carefully studied and selected to be the best seed spreaders. It has been over 10 years since this project started and thousands of trees have been planted since. My friend and I grew up meeting people from all over the world during this project and who were thrilled to be part of it. Our goal was to help our community preserve the biodiversity we were well known to have and to give the future generation an example.
Not so long ago we lost an endangered Monteverde species due to climate change, the Golden Toad. It was never seen again in the cloud forest. This is why we have set out to commit and take responsibility to not have this repeat again. We have worked with countless friends, strangers, students, and tourists and as Monteverde grows in tourism, we hope to spread the word of preservation and give a good example of what is possible if we all work together.
Josué Picado comes from a small town in Costa Rica where a sustainable, clean, and green, lifestyle is embraced. Growing up, he spent a lot of time with his friend and his friend’s mom, director of the Monteverde Institute, where they would work on helping the environment around them as well as educating others to do the same. In addition to that, he joined his community with the goal of reforesting different parts of the mountain to help the endangered bellbird have better access to nesting. Although he currently lives in San Jose, he continues to practice sustainable techniques he grew up learning.
To learn more about the institute, click here: https://monteverde-institute.org/Photo of the Monteverde Institute by Selena Avendaño
