Community Outreach

The Forestry Association

The Medicinal Plant Project
 
 

In 1996, TFI joined some of its neighbors to form a forestry association: la Asociación para la Protección de los Recursos Naturales de la Valle Guabo. It took a year for this organization to receive its official papers. During that time the organization has not been particularly active.

 

As foreigners, TFI partners feel that we should not set the agenda for this communitywide organization or assume the initiative for galvanizing it. If during recent months families in our area have placed a higher priority on other community activities, it may well be for good reasons. Hurricane César, for example, led to one local school having to be rebuilt.

 

Most of our neighbors strike us as reasonable stewards of the trees remaining on their land. They selectively harvest trees now and then for domestic use in construction or fencing. With one or two exceptions, they do not sell logs or lumber on the market.

 

It may well be that our neighbors will become more motivated to plant trees when the options at TFI's nursery include fruit trees. Or perhaps incentives in the new forestry law will encourage them to conserve forest patches and to reforest -- when these incentives become known to them. The forestry association could acquire momentum through these or other ways. We shall see.

 

Bud Kenworthy, TFI

 

The herb gardens at Los Arboles are part of our Medicinal Plant Project. We curently have two gardens, one at the upper part of the farm (Laguna tract) and the second down by the Guabo River, near our tree nursery (Guabo tract). The lower garden contains only local medicinal plants, while the upper garden combines indigenous and foreign medicinals as well as ornamental plants. Both of the gardens are used as learning laboratories, where people working and living at Los Arboles as well as our neighbors can visit. Benches and shade trellises are provided.

Plants are labeled with common names in English and Spanish and by scientific name (Latin). The medicinal plant list currently contains some eighty species, including woody and non-woody species (see Table 1). The list is updated annually.

The Medicinal Plant Project is also involved in ethnobotany; recording local herb uses and healing stories. The intent is to eventually write a small booklet about some of the more common medicinals used in the region. We have begun to work in the schools, teaching children about local plants and we hope to start small herb gardens at each of the two nearby schools. Also, we would like to exchange information and medicinal plant products with local herbalists and medical professionals to provide a wider range of health options to our community.

Most importantly, we are committed to the preservation and conservation of Costa Rican medicinal plants and to the knowledge of their uses. We hope to network with other people and organizations throughout Latin America who share similar goals and concerns.

Jennifer Van Alstine, TFI
 
 

Table 1 (under construction)