In 2008, Rios Tropicales, led by co-founder Rafael Gallo, moved into international sustainable community development collaboration by winning a South-South grant for a rural tourism project between Bhutan and Costa Rica. Rios Tropicales has historically kept a low profile about its sustainable tourism practices and philosophy within its company operations and across its local Costa Rican communities.

By Rafael Gallo, Co-Founder, Rios Tropicales – In 1985 Jimmy, Fernando and I started Rios Tropicales because we loved running rivers, we knew our small country of Costa Rica had some of the world’s best paddling in the world, and we wanted to share these rivers with others. It was natural to us to protect the rivers we were running, help the communities we were visiting and train fellow Costa Ricans to do what we were doing. From our years of international paddling experience we knew guide school best practices and started our own guide school right away.

The Planeterra Foundation’s sea turtle project (Playa Matapalo, Costa Rica) is a science-based conservation program, which was created with the purpose of protecting female sea turtles, nests, and hatchlings laid on the Matapalo beach, against poachers and natural and introduced predators. A turtle hatchery protects the eggs of this endangered species and the program has ensured the survival of the sea turtles with a large increase in the number of hatchlings in the area.

Costa Rica is a small biologically diverse country in Central America, hosting 6% of all the species of flora and fauna on the planet in an area about the size of West Virginia in the USA. Costa Rica has been the global leader in the areas of conservation and sustainable tourism. Throughout its history, Costa Rica has demonstrated its progressive efforts to promote peace, conserve the environment, and strengthen the cultural identity of the Costa Rican through responsibly managed tourism development.

Planeterra is giving away a voluntourism trip for two to Costa Rica Sea Turtle Conservation Project, through BudgetTravel’s “True Stories” contest. The “True Stories” section highlight funny, strange, heartwarming, ridiculous (brief 250-word) travel stories, and the editor picks the best story. To win the Planeterra trip, enter your true travel story for the summer edition (deadline: August 28, 2009). This sea turtle project is a science-based conservation program, which was created with the purpose of protecting female sea turtles, nests, and hatchlings laid on the Matapalo beach, against poachers…

Lapa Rips Ecolodge has received many major awards and recognitions – including National Geographic Adventure’s “50 Top Ecolodges: The Most Earth-Friendly Retreats in the World’s Most Spectacular Wilds” in 2009 and Conde Naste Traveler’s “Gold List” in 2008 and 2009. A recent addition to Lapa Rios Ecolodge’s inspiring achievements is the 2009 Coastal Living Awards (Tourism category). The Coastal Living Awards honor those working to protect and preserve coastal environments and coastlines for generations to come.

A recent article in Tico Times, “Grim Tourism Outlook Has Silver Lining,” discusses the impact of the global economic downturn on tourism in Costa Rica, noting that “the economic crisis presents an opportunity for the [tourism] sector to reinvent itself” and “to ensure future development in Costa Rica shares the vision of sustainability.” If handled effectively, the crisis can be an opportunity for fostering sustainable growth of Costa Rica as an ecotourism destination, concludes the report by a local tourism consulting group.

“Since I have been excited by the development of community-owned ecotourism businesses in Costa Rica over the last decade, and have given them a lot of space in The New Key to Costa Rica, I started seeing over development as a community issue too. It’s a sign that the people of a community do not have a say in what goes on there–to the point where the community’s water supply can be threatened. This has been the subject of several lawsuits in the northern Guanacaste beaches… Beatrice Blake, author of The New Key to Costa Rica

The Initiative “Peace with Nature”, which gives birth to the National Strategy for Climate Change, and which plans to convert Costa Rica in a C – Neutral country by the year 2021, asks for great changes and reveals big challenges to be overcome. This proposal invites us to redefine and re-invent our creative capacities in order to assume the greatest task human kind has ever faced both as a victimizer and as victim at the same time: to overcome the self imposed threat of climate change and global warming.

Foto Verde Tours, the Costa Rican ecotour company that I started with local ecologist and tourism entrepreneur Paulo Valerio, has grown since its inception three years ago, and this growth is providing a platform for us to expand our own benefits to conservation and local communities.
Foto Verde Tours offers open signup tours and customized photo travel. We run a number of photographic tours with set dates that have a particular theme. Some trips are co-led by other professional photographers…