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		The Nature Conservancy in Costa Rica Costa Rica Places We Work Costa Rica Rainforest How We Work Tropical Forests Costa Rica News Ways of Giving Contact Us

Five Easy Steps You Can Take to Save the Rainforests

1. Avoid using old growth or illegally-harvested wood:
   When shopping for wood products at your local lumber-supply store or at national chains, specifically request sustainably or legally harvested wood. Try to use reclaimed or recycled lumber whenever possible.
2. Recycle and use fewer paper products:
   Check your neighborhood, office or school for recycling programs. Print out fewer documents, use both sides of a piece of paper and reuse paper whenever possible. Each ton of recycled paper can save about 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water.
3. Use energy more efficiently:
   Turn your heat two degrees cooler in the winter and your air conditioning two degrees warmer in the summer. The small change in temperature can create a world of energy savings, which can decrease the need for oil exploration projects that can lead to deforestation. Whenever possible, carpool or use public transportation.
4. Support local meat and produce farmers:
   Outside the U.S., rainforests are often clear-cut so that farmers can grow produce or raise beef. Go to your neighborhood farmers market for locally-grown, fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. Talk to your butcher at your grocery store and request that they stock meats raised in your area.
5. Support causes that actively work to conserve rainforests:
   The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt-an-Acre program has helped protect more than 600,000 acres of critical rainforest habitat around the globe. This year’s featured Adopt-an-Acre project is working to preserve 50,000 acres of endangered forest in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan Province, on the Island of Borneo. Here, in the land called the “River of Diamonds” where orangutans, sun bears and clouded leopards reside, unsustainable logging and mining threaten to destroy one of Earth’s most important centers of natural diversity.

Learn More About Costa Rica and Rainforest Conservation:

• Where We Work: The Nature Conservancy in Costa Rica
  Costa Rica is known as a leader of the environmental movement and a pioneer of ecotourism in Central America. The Nature Conservancy is working with Costa Rica's leading environmental organizations to protect the country's rich natural heritage.
• Online Field Guide: Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
  Twenty-five years after its first national park was created here, the Osa Peninsula – a remote paradise harboring a diversity of habitats and biological richness – remains Costa Rica's last wild frontier.
• Adopt an Acre®: Save the Atlantic Forest of Brazil
  You can help save the rainforest! Help us protect the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, one of the world’s most diverse and fragile rainforests.
• Great Places Network: Join today and receive free member benefits!
  Join a global community of friends and neighbors committed to working together to ensure the diversity of life on Earth for generations to come.
• Tropical and Temperate Rainforests
  Wild and wondrous, rainforests extend from as far as Alaska and Canada to Latin America, Asia and Africa. They nurture thousands of rainforest animals and plants found nowhere else on Earth and provide life's essentials such as our medicines, food and water.