Programs | spring Programs | costa rica

The Program

Join us on an extensive field study in southern Costa Rica this spring. We will travel into primary and secondary tropical forests in the Corcovado and Piedras Blancas National Parks, and out to the Pacific Ocean. Off the beaten path and immersed in wild nature, students will learn research methods for identifying botanical species and tracking protected wildlife - including jaguars, pumas, sea turtles, scarlet macaws, monkeys and the endangered Baird’s Tapir. We’ll venture deep among the coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems around the Golfo Dulce and Sierpe River, the largest tropical fjord and mangrove on the Central American Pacific, respectively, to sample natural resources and compare species health across wildland habitats.

We invite students to trek deep into the tropical rainforests and coastal landscapes of Costa Rica, a small Central American country known as one of the most intensely biodiverse places on the planet. A leader around the world with 25% of its land preserved in National Parks and Reserves, Costa Rica contains 5% of the entire Earth’s biodiversity, including more than 6,000 plant species, 800 birds, and 500 butterflies. Flanked on both sides by parklands and surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the southern zone of Costa Rica is an epicenter for biodiversity conservation, tropical ecology, and sustainable development. Here active researchers are making great strides to protect abundant plant and animal species while mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Rich in its complex landscape history, Costa Rica is renowned as a global icon for conservation and plays an exemplary role as an eco-laboratory for trends in biodiversity preservation and sustainable development. Visiting coastal conservation areas, rural farms, eco-tourism destinations, fishing villages and local indigenous communities, students will gain firsthand experience into the complexities of conservation ecology, resource management, and regenerative agriculture practices in Costa Rica. Field research will support the existing efforts of local conservation organizations while exposing students to hands-on methods like natural resource sampling of water and soil, as well as species monitoring and evaluation of charismatic wildlife fauna.

We’ll boat through river mangroves, snorkel in the gulf to monitor coral reforestation and marine biodiversity, support nesting sea turtle conservation, research the soil regeneration impacts of innovative cattle farming techniques, learn permaculture farming methods, evaluate the efforts of sustainable palm oil plantations, identify tropical plant species, track endangered species within the national parks, explore the contradictions of growth-based conservation and sustainable development models, and experience the traditional ways of life and ecosystem services of local indigenous communities.

As we critically examine Costa Rica’s exemplary model of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, the southern zone of Costa Rica offers an immersive field location for exploring rainforest ecology, nature-based tourism, and the vital conservation of tropical forest and marine ecosystems abundant with life.

Program Photo Gallery

Tara Ruttenberg

lead instructor

PHD, Development Studies, Wageningen University & Research, 2022

Tara Ruttenberg is a sustainable development researcher living in Costa Rica. She completed her PhD in Development Studies with a specialization in critical approaches to sustainable surf tourism. Her research interests include critical surf studies, decolonial alternatives to development, and diverse economies approaches to community-based tourism. Tara has 12 years of experience facilitating study abroad programming in political ecology, integrative conservation, and sustainable development in Costa Rica. Tara leads our Costa Rica program.