Since 2013, Costa Rica’s dry tropical forests have been under siege from loggers looking to cash in on skyrocketing demand for precious hardwoods, especially cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa), also known as tropical rosewood. The illegal logging of cocobolo and other precious hardwoods threatens Costa Rica’s famous but understaffed national parks as loggers look to protected areas as the last untapped source of valuable lumber for export.
In three separate busts on different coasts, Costa Rican police officers and Coast Guard officials seized a total of 442 sea turtle eggs on Monday and Tuesday.
"[Police] found an enormous leatherback turtle in the trunk," said a press release from the Public Security Ministry. "It was alive and flapping its fins as if asking for help."
In the early morning Wednesday, police nabbed a woman with the last names Cerdas Viales, who is suspected of poaching sea turtle eggs on MoÃn Beach near the Caribbean port city of Limón.
Police arrested a man with the last names Calvo Alvarado on Monday for selling turtle eggs outside of the RÃo Blanco stadium in Limón, on the country's Caribbean coast. He faces up to two years in jail.
Park rangers on June 14 detained a boat fishing illegally near Cocos Island National Park, a protected marine area more than 300 miles from Costa Rica's Pacific Coast. The boat's fishermen had hooked 11 sharks on their longlines before the rangers intervened.
A man who went missing more than a week ago while illegally mining gold inside the boundaries of the Osa Peninsula's Corcovado National Park was rescued this week by officials from Costa Rica’s National System of Conservation Areas.
Officials from Costa Rica’s National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) issued citations to 67 people for crimes against the environment in a two-week operation, according to the organization’s control and protection unit.
