Roberta's Forest Blog — Let's Get Planting

La Reserva has seen many visitors and amazing things this past month. Everything is growing like crazy with the beautiful, life-giving rains and we’ve been busy collecting seedlings in the forest and refilling the LRFF nursery. There are now over 70 species of native trees in it now.

The last week of June, this character in the wheelbarrow came to visit and work at La Reserva. His name is Yan Linhart and he is a teacher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Along with his wonderful wife, Muriel he planted some experimental plots and took notes for future reference. He has worked, over 30 years ago, up in the Monteverde area and before that he was a forester in Arcada, California. As you can see he is completely in his element working in the dirt and appreciating the lush flora found in the tropical forest. He is hoping to find some even more optimal planting strategies to help maximize our efficiency in starting native tropical forests from scratch. Thank you, Yan!

Luis Diego Marin Schumaker and his friend Victoria came for their yearly visit around Lake Arenal. Luis is founder and president of Preserve Planet (www.preserveplanet.org), based in San Jose, Costa Rica. He has a huge virtual membership (over 15,000) at his website and sends out a great newsletter every couple of weeks. He is also working on creating native forest and connecting tree corridors in the urban area of San Jose. He has already finished two, near large factories. He’s hoping that the big trans-nationals like Firestone and Intel will pick up the ball and do this with their own funding.

Luis Diego and Victoria are extremely AWAKE to the environmental problems the world is facing right now and Daniel and I enjoy their spirits. It is so nice to sit down and talk with others who are like-minded and up to date. We got some great shots of this Praying Mantis, walked the Kiki Corridor and were amazed at how well the recently planted seedlings were doing. Back at the house Victoria taught Daniel and me how to eat a green mango with salt. It was excellent, surprisingly.

Check out the new satellite photos of La Reserva. The upper photo was taken way back in 1985 when it was completely deforested except for that one forested section at middle left. La Reserva is outlined in blue. The image below was taken in 2005, after just 6 years of forest regeneration. Again La Reserva is outlined in blue. It’s interesting to see those old cow pastures shrinking away as the old tree corridors expand.

Omar, our worker here at La Reserva came for a walk with his HUGE family and two American students, from New York City, that stayed at his house for a week. The most amazing thing happened. Just as we began our walk, down into that first forest tunnel, we could hear the Long-tailed Manakin's making their courtship sound. I don’t know how to describe it other than a New Year's noisemaker, the Chinese type that rotates on a stick. We all stopped to see what was up and saw two males doing the “wagon wheel” dance. The dance consists of two males, perched on a horizontal branch, often with a female between them. Each male flies straight up, about 2 feet, arches over and twirls in the air and then lands in the others previous perch. Up again and trade perches, over and over again. We have been lucky to observe this dance only once in all of our 25 years here, so you can imagine how exciting it was for all 11 of us to see this together. One of the students took photos and even a short video but I haven’t received a copy of it yet. If and when I do it will be posted here.

Last, but certainly not least, is the great news that came to us this past week, July 23, 2008. Don Victor Castro, you will remember the biologist from ICE in a previous blog, called me to say he has all of the materials purchased and a crew will be out this coming week to install all of the monkey bridges we have identified around Lake Arenal. We will try to get some pictures of their work and post it for all of you, who are so far away.

In closing I want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support of the LRFF. YOU are what make this work possible. YOU and your best wishes are the engine of success for the LRFF. Always remember, my dear and cherished friends, that we are working for YOU, down here in the tropics, giving the wildlife one last chance, because this is what WE ALL want and care about. We are restoring the tropical forests and protecting what’s left of them because WE ALL need these forests to have breath for ourselves and all future generation. Thank you for giving us this great work to do, we will care for our Earth always, and…..

LET’S GET PLANTING!!!