Learning from an awe-inspiring immense ecosystem that has returned to life

Travel from one end of the country to the other, north, south, east or west, and 99% of what you see is a severely domesticated landscape that offers virtually nothing to wildlife.

And the problem with this isn’t just that nature is dying away in real time. As a result of the total absence of genuinely wild places, we Irish struggle to conceptualise what diverse, abundant, nature even looks like. What it feels like to spend time in a thriving natural ecosystem.

It’s not our fault, of course: we grew up being told this desolation was somehow normal, natural, beautiful and wild, and were thus, at best, only able to see the continued worsening over our own lifetimes. That limit to our imaginations, imposed by extreme nature-depletion, is in itself a very serious obstacle to making things better.

What might it be like to live in a place where nature is not only truly valued by society, but as a result has been making a huge comeback?

In January, I found out on the other side of the Atlantic, in Costa Rica. I went there for three weeks, because I was aware that the country had managed over the last 30 or so years to reverse one of the worst deforestation rates in all Latin America, becoming a global leader in nature conservation and restoration. I wanted to find out how it was done, and what we in Ireland could learn from that.

Weeks before leaving, I announced my intentions on social media, asking for contacts with people working on nature there. As a result, I was inundated with messages, many of which proved extremely useful, especially one from my friend Alan Watson Featherstone, founder of the terrific Scottish rewilding charity, Trees for Life.

Alan suggested I contact husband-and-wife team Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, biologists and global pioneers of restoration ecology — in fact, virtual inventors of the field.

They had long been heroes of mine, since one of the first books I read soon after I began rewilding my own 73-acre West Cork farm in 2009 was about their now six decades of work in Costa Rica.

Dan and Winnie very generously agreed to spend a day showing me a little of what they have achieved, including restoring vast areas of cattle pasture to the original native forest on much of what now comprises the 420,000-acre Area de Conservación Guanacaste. It’s one thing knowing the statistics, but entirely another to see first-hand an immense ecosystem that has returned to life. I was in utter awe of what they’ve done.

There isn’t the space here to even begin to convey the wonders I encountered in Costa Rica, and if there was, I wouldn’t have the descriptive powers to do them justice. Walking in the high-altitude cloud forests of Monteverde, where every available tree surface is literally dripping with epiphytic plants (the key rainforest indicator), constantly swept by banks of thick vapour, was enchanting beyond belief. Relating the sheer intensity of life there would be impossible: only those who have actually experienced it could understand.

The southwestern Osa Peninsula, home to 2.5% of the planet’s biodiversity, despite covering only 0.001% of its surface, borders on the absurd, it’s so rich. In places like Corcovado National Park, every few steps you meet yet another exotic mammal, bird, reptile, insect, or tree trunk several metres across, its buttress roots extending like twisting snakes out across the forest floor. The tiniest, iridescent, hummingbird hovers nearby, wings a blur of 75 or more beats per second, feeding on flowers. An osprey dives to pluck a fish from the sea right near where you’re sitting on the beach, having a picnic lunch.

But while nature might be particularly intense in some parts, what is most striking to an Irish visitor is how ubiquitous it is. Driving long distances across the country, virtually all uplands are covered in thick, wild, natural forest, in stark contrast to Ireland where our equivalents are, without exception, bared by sheep or smothered under sitka deadzones.

Very often in Costa Rica, lush forests or other natural habitats border the road for miles. There is wildlife everywhere: parrots or other brightly-coloured birds fly past in flocks, hawks or vultures circle overhead, frogs make a fierce racket at night, and the most wondrous ancient strangler figs are nothing special. For someone used to the ecological barrenness that constitutes the Irish countryside, it’s almost impossible to get your head around.

How is this possible? Has giving space for nature led to a collapse in the well-being of Costa Rican society? Quite the opposite: the country has one of the highest living standards in all Latin America, largely based on eco-tourism.

But how was it done? Did it mean putting farmers or others off the land? No, it didn’t, and this is where it gets really interesting. Landowners were simply given the option of being paid for essentially rewilding their land. A great many realised this offered huge benefits to them, allowing more time to spend on businesses, families, or whatever else they wanted. Livelihoods frequently became centered around nature, working as tour guides or in other roles.

The upshot is that Costa Rica managed to bring back wild nature on an immense scale, with natural forest cover more than doubling to over 60%, but in a way that has benefitted all of society — as it must, if rewilding is to work.

Giving alternative income options was crucial (people need to survive), but everyone I spoke to about it told me there was another factor at play. The national greeting ‘Pura vida!’ (roughly, ‘Good life!’) conveys something that seems to make ‘Ticans’ stand out. Society doesn’t place the same value on amassing wealth beyond basic needs: the focus is instead more on family, friends, and enjoying ‘pura vida’.

Somehow, this more relaxed philosophy of life has fed into another approach to nature, one that the rest of the world — including Ireland — has much to learn from.

Of course, as with anywhere else it’s not perfect, and I was told that the right-wing government now in power is trying to roll back some of what has been achieved. And even in protected primary forests, insect numbers, for example, are crashing due to climate breakdown. Larvae open to find nothing to eat, as seasons go haywire, with catastrophic knock-on effects throughout ecosystems.

It’s also true that, when they started reversing nature loss, they were working with a much higher baseline in terms of what was left, compared to Ireland, meaning that there was far more already in place, waiting to recolonise back out.

And in the tropics, natural regeneration occurs way quicker than in places like Ireland, with tree growth rates, for example, perhaps 2.5 times what they are here. Around the flanks of Arenal Volcano, thick, tall, secondary forest already cloaks lava beds left by an eruption as recent as 1968.

Nonetheless, Costa Rica does provide a stark example of the potential for nature recovery in a country like Ireland, in ways that work for everyone and everything: farmers, rural communities, wildlife, the climate, tourism, and society as a whole.

Giving Irish farmers the option of receiving farm subsidies (which they already get) for not farming, but rewilding, is the first and most important step we can take towards such a much brighter, nature and hope-filled future.

What are we waiting for?