Lesson video

Hey, my name's Mrs. Harking, and today we're going to look at how we can protect tropical rainforests.

We're going to see an amazing case study of a country which has actually reversed deforestation and look at all the interesting ways in which they have done that.

Today's lesson is protecting tropical rainforest is taken from the forest biomes units.

Why forests are important? Our outcome today is going to be to look at describing how tropical rainforest can be protected using the example of Costa Rica.

Before we begin, we're going to have a look at some keywords which are useful to know to help us understand the lesson today.

So the first word is biodiversity.

This means all the living things in an ecosystem or in an area.

The more biodiverse an area is, the more living things there are in that area.

Deforestation is our next word, and that means the complete removal of trees.

So if people go into an area of forest and fell or cut down the trees, then remove those trees, and that area is no longer forest.

That area has gone through deforestation.

Habitat is our next word.

So this means the natural home or environments of an animal, a plant, or another organism.

Now, without the habitats, this species would not have food or shelter, and that would cause problems and can prevent them surviving.

Land use is our last word, and this means pretty much exactly what it says, how the land is used.

So our official definition is the function or purpose of a particular area.

So it could be used for forest or it could be used for farming, or it could be used for a combination as we'll see later.

If you would like to make a note of any of those words, please feel free to pause the video now and jot that down.

Brilliant.

So a lesson outline today includes covering, first of all, what has happened to the forest in Costa Rica, and then how has Costa Rica reversed deforestation? So first of all, what has happened to the forest in Costa Rica? Let's have a look at this case study because it is an interesting one.

So Costa Rica is a small country in Central America.

You can see that the white arrow on the inset shows where the country is, and we can see on the right hand side on our map of the world where that is in terms of the whole planet.

So Costa Rica's forest are extremely important due to their biodiversity.

Costa Rica makes up only.

03% of the world's land.

It's pretty tiny, but it holds around 5% of the estimated species on earth.

So that means that one in 20 species are in Costa Rica.

That's way more than there should be considering the amount of land there is there.

But because of the biome we've got there because of this tropical rainforest, it is, it's a country which has extremely high biodiversity and lots and lots of species found there.

So it's extremely important to protect this forest.

Okay, what percentage of the world's species are estimated to be in Costa Rica? Was it 3%, 4%, or 5%? Give you a little clue.

One in 20 species are found in Costa Rica.

Well done 5%.

Let's look further into what has happened in Costa Rica in the 1940s, which we can see on the top left hand side of our diagram here.

75% of Costa Rica was covered in forest.

This is shown by the dark green colour on the map, but large areas were cleared for farming over the years.

So if we look at 1950 for example, we can see that there's less of the dark colour representing the forest and more of the light colour representing any of the land use.

And that shows us that actually over time the forest was being cut down.

So in 1961 it went down to 53%, et cetera, et cetera.

And here we get to 1987 where there's actually only 21% of the land in Costa Rica covered in forest.

So the country experienced the highest rate of deforestation in the whole world.

However, Costa Rica turned this around and became the first tropical country in the world to reverse deforestation.

We can see on the diagram and in the graph on the right hand side that actually from 1987 things did turn around.

It's a happy ending to the story.

So the forest cover increased from 1987 where the curve was only 21% all the way up to 52.

38% in 2010.

Although the graph stops at 2010, I'd like to point out that actually the current forest cover looks fairly similar to what it did in 2010.

It hasn't increased much since then, but this still shows a really positive shift from deforestation to reforestation.

So what has happened in the forest in Costa Rica? What percentage of Costa Rica's land was returned to forest between 1987 and 2010? Give you some support.

If we have a look at 1987 on the right hand side diagram, we can see that there was 21% of the country covered in forest.

Then if we look at 2010, we can see that it was 52.

38% forest.

So we need to look at the difference between 21 and 52.

38.

Well done.

So 52.

38% minus 21% equals 31.

38%.

So 31.

38% of Costa's land has been returned to forest between 1987 and 2010.

Our task today is going to be to complete the fact file on Costa Rica's Forest.

Please, could you add an arrow to the map to show where Costa Rica is? Could you tell me in about two bullet points what's happened to Costa Rica's Forest? And could you also complete the graph using the data table? Feel free to pause the video now.

Well done.

Let's have a look at some answers.

So Costa Rica should be identified here.

You can see the black arrow on the map there.

What happens at Costa Rica's forests? So the country had experienced the highest rate of deforestation in the world.

Did you remember that fact? Costa Rica also turned this around and became the first tropical country in the world to reverse deforestation.

So have we got both of those facts that it was the highest rate of deforestation and that was turned around to the first tropical country to reverse deforestation, let's put that into statistic form.

We should have the graph completed.

You should see the complete graph on the screen now.

Check that your graph looks the same as this graph here please.

Well done.

You've used lots and lots of different skills in order to tackle this task.

Map skills, graphical skills, and thinking about some case study specific facts.

So well done, that's really good.

Now we're going to move on to the second part of our lesson.

How has Costa Rica reversed deforestation? Costa Rica has been successful in reversing deforestation through schemes which slow and stop tree felling.

So some examples of schemes like this are selective logging, ecotourism, international parks.

They've also encouraged planting of trees.

So this has been done in Costa Rica through something called agroforestry.

We're going to look at each of these in a little bit more detail.

First of all, we're going to look at selective logging.

So selective logging is when individual trees are carefully selected, only if they're valuable enough to sell.

Only those trees are filled so they don't clear a large area of forest.

Just a few select trees that are valuable and will make some money are felled.

Now in Costa Rica, they actually go one step further as well.

Sometimes these trees, instead of being removed from the forest using a vehicle which would require a road, they are removed sometimes using buffalo.

So the buffalo could move through the forest without the need for a road.

And you can see a picture of buffalo on the right hand side, just to clarify that one.

So let's do a quick check now.

What strategy at my describing? In Costa Rica, individual trees are carefully removed from the forest if they were valuable enough to sell.

What do we call that strategy? Well done.

Yes, selective logging, all right, let's have a look at our next strategy.

This is ecotourism.

Ecotourism is holidays.

Tourism means holidays really doesn't it, that care for the environment and for local people.

There's two parts of that word, holidays and caring for the environment and local people.

About half of Costa Rica's income is linked to tourism, so it's a really important sector to tackle to make sure that that is promoting the protection of rainforest.

Ecotourism can involve a number of different things.

For example, learning about local environment and how to protect it.

Tourists taking part in activities such as tree planting, wildlife spotting on canopy walkways.

We can see a photo of a canopy walkway here on the right hand side.

So these are rope bridges that are really high up in the canopy of the forest and can be quite an exciting thing to do for tourists who wants to go out and spot some nature.

The Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve is an example of somewhere which has these high walkways in the canopy for tourists.

Also sustainable practises such as hotels, reducing unnecessary laundry so they're not using too much energy and too much water.

That is another part of ecotourism, which can just help protect the resources in the area and protect the environment more generally.

Which is the correct definition of ecotourism? Is it A, holidays that make a lot of money for the local people? Is it B, holidays that care for the environment and local people? Or is it C, local people that care for the environment and tourists? Well done, it's B, Holidays that care for the environments and local people.

National parks are another strategy.

These protect areas of forest and ban any change of land use.

So this means that deforestation cannot happen in these areas.

National parks can create something called wildlife corridors.

Wildlife corridors are roots of unbroken habitats that allow animals to move across larger areas to find food, water, and to reproduce more easily.

If we don't have wildlife corridors in a country, that can mean that animals are split up into small areas of forest, and that's a real problem because many animals need a large area of forest in order to be able to find enough food.

So if they have any small areas of forest and most forests aren't connected together, the animals can't move between one patch of forest and another to find food.

If they try to move from one patch of forest to another, there won't be the right shelter and food as they do their journey from one patch to another.

So they can't actually move across.

Sometimes even a road can break forest up to the extent that it's really hard for animals to move from one part of the forest to the other side of the road.

So even roads can be problematic, but when there's large expanses of deforested area, that's even worse.

So national parks are brilliance at connecting areas together and creating large expanses of forest, especially with the wildlife corridors that allow these animals to move about.

Jaguars are the largest big cats in Costa Rica, in Santa Rosa National Park in northwest Costa Rica there were no signs of jaguars in 1971 at all, but now there are around 200 thanks to the national park and thanks to the wildlife corridors, agroforestry is a way of managing the land that includes trees alongside crops and or pasture.

Crops are grown or animals can graze amongst the trees, and this is good for farmers and for the forest.

So if we think about it, vast areas of farmlands can be changed into forest simply by putting that farm in amongst the trees.

So for example, banana trees can be grown in the forest and those bananas can be collected and sold.

They can also have many different species of crops alongside each other, and that means that there's more biodiversity in the area, and as long as there is a variety of species, it will allow animals to move through these areas as if it were natural rainforest.

So they can extend the size of rainforest by turning farms into forests, but still farming the land, still picking all the bananas, still collecting all of these different crops, just making sure that there's a variety of species in the area and that the forest is allowed to grow alongside these crops.

The government has encouraged us in Costa Rica by working with local communities, educating farmers, and giving payments to agroforestry farms. Can you match the method to the image? Well done.

So agroforestry matches to C, our picture of bananas.

So we might have banana trees grown in amongst the forest.

The banana crop collected from in amongst the forest.

We've got ecotourism, so we that's shown here by our canopy walkway, and we've got selective loggings that only a single valuable tree has been felled here in image B, Costa Rica has done many different things to protect their rainforest.

Imagine you have been invited by the Costa Rican government to explain to another country the schemes that might help them reduce deforestation.

What would you say? Can you include four suggestions for me, please? You can pause the video now.

Well done.

Let's take a look at some answers.

Your answer might look like this.

How to reduce deforestation in your country, create national parks to protect areas of forest and ban any changes of land use.

You might have gone into a bit more detail here about wildlife corridors, or you might have mentioned jaguars as well to give you an example of how this has worked really well in Costa Rica, our next strategy is encourage small scale agroforestry.

So this is farming, which uses many different species of crop grown alongside each other in a forest by working with local communities, educating farmers, and giving payments to environmental farms. The next strategy is encouraging selective logging, which involves the felling of individual trees if they are valuable enough to sell, using eco-friendly methods to remove the trees such as buffalo and not vehicles.

Another good suggestion for a strategy would be to encourage responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the natural environments.

It sustains the wellbeing of the local people and involves interpretation and education.

This is called ecotourism.

You can pause the video now if you would like to add anything of this to your own or answer.

Well done everybody.

Hopefully you found out a lot more about Costa Rica today and how they have really turned it around in terms of their forests.

So we're going to go through a summary of what we have covered, the key points that we have learned today.

So Costa Rica is a small country in Central America, which once experienced the highest rate of deforestation in the world.

Costa Rica was the first tropical country in the world to reverse deforestation.

Wildlife corridors enable species such as the jaguar to move through the rainforest, undetected, national park's, selective logging, small scale agroforestry and ecotourism have protected the rainforest.

I hope you've enjoyed learning about Costa Rica today.

I'm looking forward to seeing you next time, goodbye.