Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund

The marine sector of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste is one of the largest no-take marine protected areas in the eastern Pacific region. The goal of GDFCF is to promote this sector's restoration through non-damaging research and ecotourism, reduce illegal fishing, and mitigate the growing threats of coastal development and climate change.

GDFCF developed the unique system of employing and training parataxonomists -local Costa Rican residents living in the surrounding communities - who are trained to conduct high-level biodiversity research. They are the essential human resource for our ongoing intensive field-based species inventory.

GDFCF financially supports the government-led Programa de Educación Biológica (PEB) , an educational program that serves 2,000 elementary school students from 52 neighboring schools to the ACG protected area. The goal is to instill "bioliteracy" and natural history awareness among generations of neighboring communities who will largely determine the long term fate of protected areas and wild lands that they live next to.

GDFCF works to enlarge the protected area of Area de Conservación Guanacaste by purchasing critical wildlife habitat from willing sellers. This effort focuses on the under-protected and under-represented mid-elevation Atlantic side rainforests which have been systematically replaced by coffee and other types of crop agriculture.

GDFCF''s core mission is to support the biodiversity survival of the 169,000 hectares (~412,000 acre) of Area de Conservación through the practice of biodevelopment with its surrounding communities. As in the case of many countries, government funding for parks and protected areas is insufficient and the role of a supporting NGO is critical for their sustainability. GDFCF works in collaboration with government staff to support ongoing park operations in addition to co-managing GDFCF-owned land with the government as part of the greater ACG system of protected areas.