Palo Verde

Palo Verde National Park is my home through March 10^th.  It is a reserve in the northwest of the country that has seasonal dry forest and a large marsh.  I can already tell from the few days that I’ve been here that the park is unique in several regards.  First, the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) owns and operates a field station at Palo Verde even though it is a public park run through the Costa Rican National Park Service.  OTS had to pay a fee for each of us to enter the park and there is a separate station within the park for the rangers.  The park is a very different experience than Las Cruces and Cuericí.  There was one guard at the front gate of Las Cruces (and no guards at Cuericí), but many rangers patrol the whole park at Palo Verde, including walking around our station.  There were no other visitors at Cuericí besides our class and only a couple families a day visiting Las Cruces, but there are tons of tourists here in Palo Verde.

The OTS station

Palo Verde is quite unique in its management strategy.  The park used to be part of a giant cattle ranch until it turned into a park in the late 1970s.  Cattle were removed and cattails began invading the entire wetland area at the same time.  The wetland area is important habitat for lots of waterfowl, so the disappearance of the marsh was of great concern.  Palo Verde received an executive decree in 1998 that allowed for active management to restore the marsh (most national parks cannot do much alteration to habitat).  One of the management strategies has been to reintroduce cattle into the park in the hopes that their grazing will control the cattails.  I don’t think this has been effective, but allowing nearby farmers to keep cattle in the park must go a long way in ensuring good will between the park and the surrounding community.  In that sense, I don’t think having cattle in a national park does too much harm, but it can be annoying to find a cowpie on the soccer field or to have a cow glare at you when entering the marsh. 



View of the marsh with lots of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

I have been told that January through June corresponds with the dry season in Costa Rica, but I didn’t understand what that really meant until arriving at Palo Verde.  Las Cruces and Cuericí were both very green, with Las Cruces receiving rainfall about twice a week and Cuericí getting a lot of fog and moisture from the clouds.  Palo Verde on the other hand is dry.  Very dry.  And hot.  It has not rained here in a while, and it is likely that the area will receive no meaningful rainfall for the remainder of the dry season.  The dirt on the soccer field is cracked and the grass is brown.  A large amount of trees in the forest have lost their leaves and the marsh looks like it is at a low level.  There have been practically no clouds overhead.  I’m incredibly fascinated what the area is like towards the end of the dry season.



View of some of the dry forest

Interestingly, the area around the park is extremely productive despite the dry season.  A lot of water intensive crops like rice, sugarcane, and watermelon are produced here.  Farmers depend on irrigation, but this seems like a low efficiency system.  Costa Rica created an artificial lake near the Arenal Volcano to create electricity through a dam, and the water flowing out of the dam is used to irrigate dry farms in the Guanacaste region that otherwise would not be able to grow the crops they do.

Rice field

This area is quite rich in wildlife, and I have already seen tons of White-faced Capuchins, two Howler Monkeys, one Spider Monkey, several Coatis, and more Black Spinytail Iguanas than I can handle.  I’ve also been able to observe the famous Ant-Acacia tree interaction firsthand, which is featured in all ecology textbooks.  Palo Verde is also quite buggy.  I am always itchy due to bug bites, and we need mosquito nets over our beds at night.  The only large animal that I haven’t seen yet that I want to is a crocodile, but hopefully that will change soon!

Two White-faced Capuchins



Black Spinytail Iguana

The next two and a half weeks will be extremely busy, with faculty-led projects starting tomorrow, then independent projects, two midterms, a plant taxonomy key, and our insect identifications all due before we leave for San Jose (and basically no rest days until San Jose).  Hopefully I can survive!