Connecting Costa Rica's wildlife

Project goal: Establishing 128 connecting structures - so called wildlife or biological corridors - between conservation areas in Costa Rica
Project partner: Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación (SINAC), German development agency, GIZ, supported by the International Climate Initiative (IKI)
Project size: 1.7 million hectares, covering almost one third of Costa Rica
Project budget: 6 million euros
Project duration: The project runs from 2014 to 2020.

Costa Rica is known for its incredible biodiversity and unique environmental policies. One of those policies is a mammoth effort to connect the country's many and widely scattered conservation areas using 128 wildlife corridors. Conservationists study animal migration routes to determine the corridors, which will enable animals, such as the three wattled bellbird, to safely migrate between forested areas. Each year, the bird with its bell-like call moves between the Caribbean lowlands, as far north as Nicaragua, and Costa Rica's cloud forests in Monteverde, where it nests. The journey is long - and the bird needs to rest along the way but branches are lacking between protected areas. International and local development agencies have to convince private landowners and farmers to forgo the use of parts of their land, so animals like the bell-bird can move freely from place to place.

A film by Joachim Eggers