Classroom Costa Rica

    Walking through the Cloud Forest Reserve was mystical and amazing, the mist weighing down on you from the low hanging cloud, droplets of water rolling off every leaf and bromeliad as you passed by, a strange feeling of being isolated and all alone with only the company of the bird calls. This was the perfect example of a Cloud Forest, a generally tropical forest characterized by its low hanging cloud cover, usually starting at the canopy level

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Expecting all of these things I was surprised to enter the Cloud Forest Reserve when we actually visited it. The air was as clear as could be, no sign of even the slightest amount of mist. The trees looked green and healthy but there was not one droplet of water coming from any of the leaves. Also, everything was as clear as a bell not muffled by the cloud cover. While walking through the Cloud Forest Reserve I was wondering to myself how it could have gone through so much change in just twenty years time.
I did a little studying to find out. What is happening to the Cloud Forest? I read up on it and found out that global warming and deforestation are the two main threats to the cloud forest. When the trees are cut down to create farm land moisture is no longer trapped in the canopy, this leads the clouds to climb higher and higher. This also means that the moisture is no longer as prominent as it used to be. Not only are the naturalists fretting, but many of the animal species are dying off because of their quickly changing habitats. Many of the animals living in the cloud forest have very specific needs with their living conditions and if the forest changes any more they could all be in very big danger. The quetzal, a rare bird we were lucky to see four or five times in the Cloud Forest Reserve, is loosing its home in the clouds as they lift higher and higher up the mountain. The golden toad has already died off for a combination of reasons, one of them being that it could not survive in its rapidly changing surroundings.

I was surprised to see all of the change that had happened and just shocked that something so huge could happen in such a short amount of time. It’s not just the loggers in Costa Rica that are destroying the cloud forest, we have all contributed to this. Every time you start your car, turn on the lights, take a shower, power your computer, waste paper, another tree goes down, another quetzal dies, the clouds lift. It’s not just one country’s fault, we have all contributed to this and if we work together we can turn this around.

-Emma

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