Área de Conservación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica: Converting a tropical national park to conservation via biodevelopment

Abstract The ~30, 000 hectare classical Costa Rican Parque Nacional Santa Rosa has used about 35 years and 107 million to be converted to the 169, 000 ha government‐NGO hybrid Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). This semi‐decentralized conservation entity has today a staff of ~150 paraprofessional resident Costa Ricans, biodeveloping at least 650, 000 multicellular species (Eucaryotes) into perpetuity for ACG survival through being integrated with its local, regional, national, and international society. ACG began in 1985 as an ongoing exercise of landscape‐level ecosystem rescue and restoration of a continuous swath from 6 km out in the Pacific ocean, across dry forested lowlands, up and over the volcanic Cordillera Guanacaste, and down into the rain‐forested Caribbean lowlands. It is being impacted by climate change, yet its diverse ecosystems hold hope for major biodiversity survival, albeit in new community assemblages. It quickly became simultaneously a biophysical challenge and an administratively novel challenge in decentralized conservation in a democratic tropical country. ACG specializes at being managed by on‐the‐job stimulated and trained residents with minimal formal education, searching for ways to involve ACG in its society without damaging its wildness, and pioneering ways to render wild biodiversity to being a welcome member at society's negotiating table. It continues to pay its bills through government subsidy, generous donors, payments for services, project grants, and huge in‐kind contributions from mutualisms. ACG hopes that the concept will spread south–south to other tropical countries while they still have some of their wild biodiversity with which to integrate. Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.