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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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 Carara corridor visitors have access to
mature trees
Dutch mayor comes here
to push ecological corridor By Ernst Roemers Special to A.M. Costa Rica What does Costa Rica do so wrong in nature management that a Dutch mayor comes to ask authorities to change their policies? The mayor is Leen Verbeek of the Dutch city of Purmerend near Amsterdam. He explained: “Costa Rica has good laws and good rules for the protection of nature, but as in many
The connections are vital to maintain a robust gene pool with genetic diversity. For this reason the Dutch foundation together with the Costa Rican foundation Arbofilia purchase land in the Carara area near the Gulf of Nicoya to make the north-south connection. The organizations have purchased some 340 hectares (840 acres) of land and with an adjacent corridor the effort has almost repaired the connection, said Verbeek. In the Carara corridor the foundation is reforesting, but the corridor will not be a traditional nature park. “It must serve the local population for drinking water and for seeds and should be something just for tourist,” said the Dutch mayor. Land speculation causes difficulties for purchasing the necessary land for the corridor. “Land speculators sell the land to Americans," Verbeek said. "They want to create a coffee farm or a teak plantation or just only a house with view on sea.' The much larger problem, he said, is the construction of the Panama–Guatemala electrical power line. In the plans this power line crosses the Carara corridor and cuts the vital north-south connection for the animals. The mayor said that it seems that other interest in politics and economy are prevailing above nature. "This week I will talk with a lot of Costa Rican authorities about this problem,” Verbeek said. “Costa Ricans must change from their traditional concept of conservation of nature and learn to realize the importance of corridors for nature.”  Sign at corridor access makes clear that one goal is genetic diversity for the animals.
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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 A.M.
Costa Rica/Elise
Sonray
Zenon Reid lives on family land and cares for foreigners'
properties |
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Lure of noni brought some to
a new life in Bocas del Toro
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By Elise Sonray
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff The noni trees on Punta de Pargo are not living up to their promise these days. The plants that were supposed to yield bumpy white and green fruit to make North American investors rich now look wild and deserted on the rocky shores at Bocas del Toro, Panamá. But there is a silver lining for some who were lured to the area by promises of a lucrative retirement. Tom McMurrain, the man who sold the land to foreigners, is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for fraud charges in the United States. In Panamá McMurrain ran San Cristobal Land Development Inc., a project that promised foreigners would become well-off, land-holding citizens of Panamá. Now, four years after McMurrain's arrest, there are only two wooden houses at Punta de Pargo, and neither one belongs to a foreigner. Zenon Reid, one of the men who lives there, said he tends the neighboring property for a woman from the United States. No foreigners actually live on the land, he said. San Cristobal Land Development advertised property in Bocas del Toro on Punta de Pargo, about a 30-minute boat ride from the main island. In a series of articles, The Panama News attempted to shed light on McMurrain and his company. A 2003 article from The Panama News described somewhat tongue in cheek what the company said it offered: “For prices ranging from $71,000 to $126,000, they sell you beach front land in Bocas del Toro. They plant 50 percent of the land with tropical hardwood trees, mainly teak, and the other 50 percent with noni. The hardwood is cut and sold after 20 to 25 years. In the meantime, the noni generates residual income, tax free, because noni is a hot product that sells for good prices. Being a reforestation investment, investors can get residency in Panamá.” The article was written by Okke Ornstein, who published several exposes on McMurrain. Shortly after the articles, San Cristobal Land Development Inc. filed a criminal action against the Panamá News, its editor and reporter Ornstein. But subsequent events, like McMurrain's extradition to the United States, made the cases moot. Melody Burt, the owner of a real estate company in Bocas del Toro, said she originally came down to Panamá seven years ago because of McMurrain. It looked like a great deal, said Ms. Burt. That was until the news broke that the deal might not be as advertised. “I was the first to demand my deposit back,” said Ms. Burt, who added that she did get back more than $100,000. Noni, which has a strange taste, can be eaten and also drunk as a juice. It is indigenous to Southeast Asia and also grows in the Pacific Islands and areas of the Caribbean. Noni is said to have various medicinal properties and is used by cultures around the world. In 2001 the University of Hawaii at Manoa began to study the effect of noni in Cancer patients and principal results seemed to point at some pain reduction. |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Elise Sonray
This noni fruit was found growing in another section of Bocas
del Toro.McMurrain's company played up the benefits of noni to attract investors, including the fact that the trees are supposed to bear all year round. Mark Johnson, a real estate agent at Ms. Burt's company, Beyond Bocas Real Estate, said he became interested in Panamá because of McMurrain, too. Johnson's wife came down to check out the great deal, he said. When she got home, she searched McMurrain's name on the Internet and that was the end of their plans to farm noni, said Johnson. But the couple came back, and now Johnson is working and living in Bocas del Toro. McMurrain was sentenced to seven years, three months in federal prison on charges of mail fraud and wire fraud related to a loan fraud scheme and was ordered to serve an additional five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Georgia. McMurrain was ordered to pay restitution of approximately $7.5 million. But this case did not involve Panamá. Some people actually did get land, said Ms. Burt. But it took them four years to get the title, she said. Ownership was confusing. Ms. Burt said McMurrain had sold some pieces of land to more than one client and that he had sold some land that didn't even belong to him. Reid, the caretaker, who said his piece of land used to belong to his grandfather, wasn't sure if McMurrain had tried to sell his property. No one has ever sold the noni though, he said, and the trees in that area are failing to produce any fruit now, he added, gesturing to a fruitless noni tree. He said he thought they were sick. Ms. Burt said one good thing came out of the San Cristobal Land Development project: she discovered Panama. “I thought of a way that I could stay here,” she said. Now with her own real estate company Ms. Burt is the one enjoying her piece of paradise. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
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Scientists say ocean rise
from ice cap may be underestimated
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By the University of Wisconsin-Madison
news service
If the lessons being learned by scientists about the demise of the last great North American ice sheet are correct, estimates of global sea level rise from a melting Greenland ice sheet may be seriously underestimated. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of researchers reports that sea level rise from greenhouse-induced warming of the Greenland ice sheet could be double or triple current estimates over the next century. "We're not talking about something catastrophic, but we could see a much bigger response in terms of sea level from the Greenland ice sheet over the next 100 years than what is currently predicted," says Anders Carlson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of geology and geophysics. Carlson worked with an international team of researchers. Scientists have yet to agree on how much melting of the Greenland ice sheet — a terrestrial ice mass encompassing 1.7 million square kilometers — will contribute to changes in sea level. One reason, Carlson explains, is that in recorded history there is no precedent for the influence of climate change on a massive ice sheet. "We've never seen an ice sheet disappear before, but here we have a record," says Carlson of the new study that combined a powerful computer model with marine and terrestrial records to provide a snapshot of how fast ice sheets can melt and raise sea level in a warmer world. Carlson and his group were able to draw on the lessons of the disappearance of the Laurentide ice sheet, the last great |
ice mass to cover much of the
northern hemisphere. The Laurentide ice sheet, which encompassed large
parts of what are now
Canada and the United States, began to melt about 10,000 years ago in
response to increased solar radiation in the northern hemisphere due to
a cyclic change in the orientation of the Earth's axis. It experienced
two rapid pulses of melting — one 9,000 years ago and another 7,600
years ago — that caused global sea level to rise by more than half an
inch per year. Those pulses of melting, according to the new study, occurred when summer air temperatures were similar to what are predicted for Greenland by the end of this century, a finding that suggests estimates of global sea level rise due to a warming world climate may be seriously underestimated. The most recent estimates of sea level rise due to melting of the Greenland ice sheet by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest a maximum sea level rise during the next 100 years of about 1 to 4 inches. That estimate, Carlson and his colleagues note, is based on limited data, mostly from the last decade, and contrasts sharply with results from computer models of future climate, casting doubt on current estimates of change in sea level due to melting ice sheets. According to the new study, rising sea levels up to a third of an inch per year or one to two feet over the course of a century are possible. Even slight rises in global sea level are problematic as a significant percentage of the world's human population — hundreds of millions of people — lives in areas that can be affected by rising seas. |
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meet in Chile over unrest By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Bolivian President Evo Morales and a group of South American leaders have begun an emergency summit in an effort to resolve a political crisis in his country. Morales and the other heads of state started their meeting Monday in Santiago, Chile. After arriving in Chile, Morales said he was looking for support from his South American counterparts. He also accused opposition Bolivian governors of mounting a coup against him. South American leaders scheduled the talks to discuss the conflict that killed at least 28 people last week. Government and opposition supporters clashed last week over Morales' plans to rewrite the constitution and redistribute land and natural gas revenues to the poor. The conflict pits the rich against the poor, many of whom are native people like the president himself. The governor of the oil-rich Tarija province, Mario Cossio, told reporters he and Morales will meet when Morales returns from Chile. The crisis began when supporters of right-wing opposition governors fired shots at pro-government peasant farmers in the province of Pando. Morales has accused Pando's governor, Leopoldo Fernández, of ordering a massacre. Fernández denies having anything to do with the violence. The violence prompted Morales to declare martial law in Pando and send troops to take control of the airport in the provincial capital, Cobija. Oil futures drop again By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Global oil prices fell Monday as investors apparently interpreted the bankruptcy of a major U.S. investment bank as a signal that the global economy could slow down, cutting demand for oil. Prices were also pushed down by reports that Hurricane Ike did only limited damage to key U.S. oil producing and refining facilities. In electronic trading in New York, the price of oil for future delivery was down more than $7, putting the price of a barrel of oil at $94.13. That is the lowest price since February, and a drop of one-third since the record-high recorded in July. Another benchmark oil price, Brent crude, fell even lower. |
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