Giant fern tree in Costa Rica’s Rain Forest

Sunlight Peekiing thru Rain Forest Canopy

Costa Rica’s Rain Forest

Costa Rica is famous among tourist as having beautiful rain forest where hundreds of species of plants and animals live.   The best place in Costa Rica  for a tourist to see a primary rain forest, one that is hundreds of years old and has never been cut,  is  Corcovado National Park in the Southwestern Pacific coastlines.  You have to take a boat or a small plane to get here.    Also in Monteverde is the Monteverde cloud forest reserve which is a primary rain forest.  There is some very beautiful rain forest in the Arenal area of which part is primary.   Also there is a vast primary rain forest in  South Central Costa Rica but the infra structure to get into this forest is very limited.

It always rains in a rain forest.  Sometimes up to 260 inches a year.  The average temperature during the day is 77 degrees F. and around 64 degrees F at night.

Tropical rain forest have many names, among them is “jewels of the earth” and the “world’s largest pharmacy”  One quarter of our medicines come from plants within the rain forest. And one half of the world’s plants and animals live here.

Today only 6% of the earths surface is covered with rain forest due to deforestation.  40% of the earths oxygen comes from these forests.

Trees are the earth’s lungs.  They take in  carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.    So every time you  cut a tree, you are interfering with this cycle.

When a tree within a rain forest is cut down,  the plants and animals who live there have to look for a new home.

Fortunately, in Costa Rica a large percentage of the primary and secondary rain forest are under preservation in the form of National Parks and Wildlife Reserves.  Tourist  have the opportunity to enjoy these parks and see the animals, birds, and plants living there.  Thank you, Government of Costa Rica for having the vision to preserve these natural  wonders.