A Child’s Paradise—a Gift to the Planet
Like 99.9% of everyone I know in New York, I've always dreamed of owning my own piece of paradise. And like a smaller percentage, I'm interested in conservation . Making an annual charitable donation is fine for free tote bags and invitations to parties, but when my daughter was born, I wanted our belief in protecting the environment to be tangible. I wanted conservation to be sweet and palpable like a ripe papaya, to screech and howl as monkeys do, and shine brightly like a blue Morpho butterfly. I wanted it to be fun.
So I called The Nature Conservancy and asked them about purchasing land for conservation. My only requirements were that the land be fairly accessible, on the water, in a tropical country and, of course, have stunning panoramic views. This is how we came to buy Finca Dormilona (Sleepyhead Farm) , 133 acres of pristine mountainous rain forest and palm groves on Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula.
The property overlooks Golfe Dulce, a deep tropical fjord where Humpback whales come to give birth, dolphins escort our boat to the property, and sardines dance in the shallows. A hike up to the waterfall is like wandering through a giant Mercado of fruits, nuts and medicinal plants: wild avocado, ginger , mango , guava, vanilla beans, wild almond and cashew trees, cacao, and sweet orange star fruit that hang from trees like Chinese lanterns. A toucan hops from branch to branch nearby. We confront a family of white faced monkeys in the mangroves. Every day offers up a surprise: sloth, tree frogs, scarlet macaw, howler, spider and squirrel monkeys. My children had visited the rain forest before, but it's different when it's their own back yard. This is their class room, their inheritance, and their responsibility.
Protecting this land is significant for conservation because it helps create a biological corridor for jaguar to roam between Corcovado and Piedras Blancas National Park.
Because I only needed a small plot to build on, I worked out an arrangement whereby I kept five acres overlooking the gulf, and donated the surrounding 128 acres to protect them from the development that's sweeping across so much of Costa Rica. The Conservancy made investing in property abroad easy. There 's a whole different comfort level with the Conservancy being involved in managing the land. Every time a log falls across the road or someone tries to poach puma, the problem is addressed. And because the Conservancy works through a local environmental NGO, we're part of the community.
It always strikes me as odd that my friends call me an environmentalist. As an American whose consumption level is statistically just above average, I create almost 32 times the amount of carbon emissions as someone living in a developing country such as Kenya. Multiply that by 48 years and preserving 133 acres of rain forest still leaves me with the kind of carbon footprint that my children can hold against me. At least some day when natural resources are scarce, weather becomes even more erratic, and my children can rightly blame my generation for their living standard, I will have made this one compensatory and adventurous gesture.
If you are interested in the kind of conservation commitment described by Ms. Noble-Wootton, please call the Long Island Chapter at 631-329 -7689 ext. 12. We will put you in touch with staff within The Nature Conservancy, which has programs in over 30 countries.