Customer Reviews

The Quetzel and the Macaw: The Story of Costa Rica's National Parks

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This is a well-written account of the creation of the Costa Rica National Parks. The best reading is when the author goes to the parks and interviews people working there and who struggled to create the parks under sometimes strong opposition from business and other interests. They did so at risk of their lives in some cases. As the book goes on and the park system grows, the focus shifts more to the ins and outs of the national politics that both aided and hindered the establishment of the parks.

We picked this up prior to visiting Costa Rica. Why Costa Rica? We wanted something somewhat rugged since the last trip we took out of the continent had been to London. I had been pushing for the Galapagos Islands since reading Gould's _Ever Since Darwin_, but that turned out to be too expensive. The brochures we picked up glowed with Costa Rica's glories, and it seemed to be in our price range--and it was. Jill pressed me to find a book about Costa Rica (a travelogue or similar, but not a guide book) since she had done the planning and agent interface. I couldn't find an armchair travel book, but I did discover this excellent book on the formation of Costa Rica's national park system.

This is more of a history than a travel narrative, although the author did visit Costa Rica and its parks several times and gives his impressions of the area. It follows the combined attempts to set aside land for species habitat and ecological preservation, from the working of a couple of expatriated Norwegians through the two young university students who became the leaders of the National Park Service. Many of Costa Rica's park works have been ahead of their time, especially for the area of the world in which the work is being done. I am excited to see what I have read about, not only the good things like the parks themselves, but the parts that haven't gone quite right because of the need to balance on the fine line between preservation and tourism.