Private Costa Rican reserve makes IUCN’s Green List

September 2026

Central America (Free Read)

El Niño-driven drought wilts Central American crops

At first glance, the cornfields lining rural roads in the northern portion of El Salvador’s San Vicente department give the impression of crops on the ......

Guatemala

Land access a challenge for mangrove-honey project

Mirella Gutiérrez rushes through her household chores while checking and rechecking her phone for honey orders and news of digital-marketing tutorials. For several years, she ......

Costa Rica

Private Costa Rican reserve makes IUCN’s Green List

Costa Rica’s privately managed Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve has become the country’s first protected area formally recognized by the International Union for Conservation of ......

Brazil

Brazil sets regulatory stage for rare-earth industry

Brazil aims to spur large-scale rare-earth production with the enactment in September of a regulatory and financial-incentives law governing the metallic minerals, an increasingly sought-after ......

Panama

Pig-farm waste bedevils Azuero river-water supplies

Deforestation and unmanaged runoff from pig farms and public dumps have left 200,000 people on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula without clean water for over a year. Since ......

Around the Region

Some reservoir gains belie water-supply ills in Mexico

Mexico City is breathing a sigh of relief as water levels in the Cutzamala reservoir, which holds roughly 25% of the capital’s water supply, have ......

Centerpiece (Free Read)

Brazil nears crucial green-policy crossroads

Considering who the two candidates are—left-leaning incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and far-right challenger, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro—it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Brazil’s ......

Q&A

For ecosystems expert, Brazil’s election poses starkly different paths

Mercedes Bustamante, 63, is a professor of ecology at the University of Brasília. There, she directs the Institute of Biological Sciences, a research center. Born ......

Private Costa Rican reserve makes IUCN’s Green List

Costa Rica

The Monteverde Reserve sits astride the Continental Divide. (Centro Científico Tropical)

Costa Rica’s privately managed Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve has become the country’s first protected area formally recognized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for “effective and equitable management of protected and conserved areas.” The IUCN, the world’s largest environmental network of government and civil society organizations, grants such recognition by certifying reserves for inclusion on its Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas. Its announcement in July that the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve would make the list marks the first time such recognition has been granted to a private reserve in Latin America. Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve is managed by the Tropical Science Center (CCT), a non-governmental institution dedicated to research, environmental education and nature-reserve management. “This is a major international recognition in strong governance and effective management,” says Mario Roa, executive director of the CCT, which has owned Monteverde since 1972... [Log in to read more]

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September 2026

Central America (Free Read)

El Niño-driven drought wilts Central American crops

At first glance, the cornfields lining rural roads in the northern portion of El Salvador’s San Vicente department give the impression of crops on the ......

Guatemala

Land access a challenge for mangrove-honey project

Mirella Gutiérrez rushes through her household chores while checking and rechecking her phone for honey orders and news of digital-marketing tutorials. For several years, she ......

Costa Rica

Private Costa Rican reserve makes IUCN’s Green List

Costa Rica’s privately managed Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve has become the country’s first protected area formally recognized by the International Union for Conservation of ......

Brazil

Brazil sets regulatory stage for rare-earth industry

Brazil aims to spur large-scale rare-earth production with the enactment in September of a regulatory and financial-incentives law governing the metallic minerals, an increasingly sought-after ......

Panama

Pig-farm waste bedevils Azuero river-water supplies

Deforestation and unmanaged runoff from pig farms and public dumps have left 200,000 people on Panama’s Azuero Peninsula without clean water for over a year. Since ......

Around the Region

Some reservoir gains belie water-supply ills in Mexico

Mexico City is breathing a sigh of relief as water levels in the Cutzamala reservoir, which holds roughly 25% of the capital’s water supply, have ......

Centerpiece (Free Read)

Brazil nears crucial green-policy crossroads

Q&A

For ecosystems expert, Brazil’s election poses starkly different paths

Mercedes Bustamante, 63, is a professor of ecology at the University of Brasília. There, she directs the Institute of Biological Sciences, a research center. Born ......