Big Marina Resorts in the Osa Peninsula

In a Perfect World the global population is less than 100 millions, everybody is living wherever prefer because the 90% of the jobs are possible to do using a personal computer that has wireless access to the GlobNet from any point of the planet.
People uses a simplified version of an helicopter, driven by a computer, that leave the passengers free to observe the wonderful panorama of a planet covered by a dense forest, without any motorways, overpopulated towns, industrial agglomerations and malls. Undergrounds factories produce a perfect imitation of any kind of food, but there are people that prefer to hunt and fish for the proteins they need , and the amount of animals that they kill is insignificant in relation to the incredible population of any specie of wildlife animal, that now are populating the whole planet and the seas. Energy is produced in underground atomic hydrogen fusion centrals, the amount of energy is so big that is possible to produce matter with it, and the only sub product is oxygen. Obviously for free. All the antique concept of nations and government are obsolete, and everybody is participating to any decision, if he want, simply connecting to the Central Decisional Hub, and add his skill and knowledge in the Decision Data Base, a kind of Blog, where the main computer takes informations for its decisions. A perfect world, where Humans and Nature lives in peace and harmony, forever.

But, unfortunately, humans doesn’t reach yet a so high grade of civilization, and we have to deal with ignorance, greed, falsity, stupidity and presumption.

We have to live in an imperfect world, accepting it and trying to make it better, for us and for the other living beams, that have the same, or greater, right for to live, grow and reproduce.

For to guarantee this, we must act in a way that doesn’t put our needs too much over the needs of the rest of the inhabitants with fur or feathers, that share this common house.

Often is difficult to see which decision will bring more benefits than damages, and often, people don’t want to see it because this will means to have to re-fit all the things in which believe, or, much more down to earth, to reduce the earnings or the ” standard of life”.

A similar situation is the one in which we are in these day, here in the Osa Peninsula, and I am talking of all the discussions about the possibility that a big marina resort will be made along the coast, at few kilometres south of Puerto Jimenez.

I heard a lot of people talking about this possibility and I heard things against and in favor of it, things that have some logical fundation, and things that are just hepatic secretions; for example people that, logically, are worried about all the effects that the massive introduction of population external to this area, will have over the social tissue, and other , much more on the hepatic side, absolutely mad because all these people coming from the outer world, will ” fill ” the waves in the surf spots, making much more difficult to catch that transcendental wave, and changing their lives forever….

But the most of the negative comments came from the self-declaring ” environmentalists “, that simply declare war to this, and other similar, project, because, they say, the impact over the local environment will be to much harmful, and could put in crisis a lot of animal species.

If is true that a big project like this would be, normally, a possible serious danger for wildlife, but we have to focalize over the specific situation: the land where this resort would be made is, actually, a pasture land, with some trees only along the fences that divide the pastures, and the 95 % of the surface covered with a poor quality grass, that doesn’t host, even, crickets.

It is a land that often is treated with herbicides, and where the owner has diverted a river and drained almost all the wet land, with the exception of that ones where is possible to produce shrimps and tilapia fish, which breeding needs a huge use of artificial food and a lot of chemicals to fight diseases, not a nice natural environment at all !!

Birds and mammals, like monkeys, lives there in small endangered groups, almost isolated from the rest of the Peninsula for the fragmentation of the tree continuity, a land that has lost its natural equilibrium long time ago, and that now is just a biological desert.

So in this imperfect world, the change of this desert to a well organized comunity, with a lot of houses, yes , is true, but a lot of green areas, with a lot of trees, several ponds and lakes, more diversification of the use of the land, and much more interest in protect and improve wildlife (you know, some Scarlet macaw in the back garden make much easy to sell a one million dollars house), from a mere biological point of view, is a great improvement.

Time ago, when I was not yet a citizen of this small town, and I was living in the middle of the most biological interesting place of Costa Rica, the Sierpe River Valley, with a friend that now lives here too, Mike Boston, we start collecting any kind of snakes, with a special emphasis for the more venomous ones, with the aim of start a breeding centre, managed by a foundation, Arborea, that I created with my former mate, and the idea was to make some money selling the snakes in Europe, where a good specimen is worth thousand of Euro, and with the earning buy some land to protect, collect there some more specimen for to increase the breeding, and so on….in our dreams, in a perfect world, in a few years all the country would be ours, well managed and protected, forever….

In a perfect world the Ministerio del Ambiente, would be managed by people which aim is to protect and serve the Nature, looks for and find ways to improve the welfare of the natural environment and the living being that inhabit it, in a perfect world, progressive ideas for to obtain it, would be seen like a gift and not like some more work to do, another heavy duty to add to the almost overhuman ones that already are killing them….

In a perfect world, “animalists” would do something for to stop the killing of one million green turtle per year, slaughtered by the Ecuadorian fishing fleet, at few miles from here, before than invoke the celestial thunders and lighting against the ” horror” of a marina that could destroy, maybe, four or five turtle nests…. or perhaps, the main reason they have against this project is that it will destroy the crops of psychedelic mushrooms, so abundant in the pasture lands along the Road to Matapalo.

It is ok….we have to maintain the vigilance over the situation, but we must analyze it with objectivity and intelligence; a project of that size and importance can’t be liquidate just for some hepatic malfunctioning, and, due to the fact that is still in its pre-born step, it is possible to apply the pressure necessary for to modify any dangerous part of it.