TORTUGUERO, Limón – Every year, 100,000 tourists visit Tortuguero National Park and its surrounding hotels and restaurants on Costa Rica’s northern Caribbean coast. The park – known for its nesting sea turtles, tranquil canals and lush tropical rain forest – is the country’s fourth most-visited protected area.
A new study has found alarmingly high levels of pesticides in the urine of pregnant Costa Rican women working in and living near the banana industry in Matina, Limón. The chemical ethylene thiourea (ETU) found in the fungicide mancozeb, which is sprayed over banana plantations here, can be detrimental to fetal brain development, according to the report released Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The president said he envisions the moratorium extending to other coastal communities on both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. While much of the attention regarding the Maritime Zone Law has focused on the inhabitants of the Caribbean coast, residents on the Pacific coast also are affected.
After more than 10 years of debate, lawmakers approved a bill in a first round vote Wednesday to reform Costa Rica’s Constitution to redefine the Central American country as a “multiethnic and plurinational” republic. The bill would add language to Article 1 of the constitution, which defines Costa Rica as a “democratic, free and independent” republic.
The seven men accused of the murder of sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora will stand trial on October 27, the prosecutor's office confirmed to The Tico Times today. The public trial will be held at a court in Limón on the country's Caribbean Coast, where the murder took place.
Police arrested two men suspected of killing an endangered green sea turtle in Parismina, a fishing village on the northern Caribbean coast, on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials found the two men in a boat with a gutted mother turtle who appears to have been in the process of laying her eggs.
