About Coalición Floresta

Our Mission

We protect and preserve lands in Costa Rica's Brunca Region that are vital for community well-being, environmental balance, and sustainability. We halt projects that threaten these values, foster awareness, and empower local conservation efforts.

By preserving critical habitats while empowering communities with ecological knowledge, we create a legacy that honors biodiversity and cultural heritage. Our work makes conservation collaborative—education inspires action, and protected lands safeguard forests for future generations.

Who We Are

We're a coalition of ticos and internationals united by love for Costa Rica's forests. While we're majority Costa Rican, at some point all of our ancestors lived elsewhere. We're united by our goals, not by where we were born.

We're a Costa Rican registered foundation operating with precision, transparency, and independence. We combine paid contractors and volunteers to carry out our work, focusing our resources where they matter most: removing bureaucratic barriers and defending forests through strategic legal action.

Newly Established in 2025

Coalición Floresta was founded in 2025 with seed funding to establish our legal framework, build our organizational structure, and launch our first conservation initiatives. We're a young organization with an urgent mission—the forests we're protecting can't wait for us to grow slowly.

Our seed funding covers basic operations, but to expand our legal capacity, support more landowners, and take on additional cases, we need community support. Every donation directly funds forest protection—whether filing legal challenges, helping landowners navigate bureaucracy, or documenting threats to critical habitats. Your contribution helps us grow into the organization Costa Rica's forests need us to be.

What We Do

What We're Working On

We've partnered with a community in Costa Rica's Central Pacific region to challenge a developer planning to construct dense housing and commercial facilities within a critical biological corridor. As with many destructive projects, the developer markets this development as "sustainable" and "eco-friendly"—greenwashing language that obscures the reality of forest fragmentation and habitat destruction.

This biological corridor serves as a vital link connecting fragmented forest patches, allowing wildlife to move between protected areas. Breaking this connection would isolate populations, reduce genetic diversity, and threaten species that depend on these corridors for survival. The local community recognizes what's at stake—not just for wildlife, but for water quality, flood protection, and the ecological integrity that sustains their region.

We'll share more details as our case progresses and legal strategy permits. This fight matters—it will set precedent for how Costa Rica protects biological corridors against development pressure disguised as sustainability.

Private Wildlife Refuges provide Costa Rican landowners with official government recognition, property tax exemptions, and legal protection for their conservation commitments—but the 2-3 year bureaucratic process prevents many eligible landowners from securing this designation. We're developing streamlined tools and processes to help landowners navigate the application system—removing barriers between willing conservationists and the programs designed to support them.

Our pilot projects focus on the Brunca Region, working with landowners who want to protect their forested properties but need assistance with formal applications, biological studies, and SINAC compliance requirements. These pilots will inform scalable systems that could help hundreds of landowners secure official refuge status—transforming good intentions into legally protected forests with tangible tax benefits.

We're launching a comprehensive social media and public education program to shine light on development threats and build public support for enforcement of existing conservation laws. Many destructive projects proceed because communities don't know they're happening until it's too late. By documenting projects, explaining legal frameworks, and sharing Costa Rica's conservation history, we're creating informed constituencies who can demand accountability.

Our content strategy combines rigorous research with accessible storytelling—showing why forests matter, how laws protect them, and what happens when enforcement fails. We'll profile successful conservation efforts, document ongoing threats, and provide communities with tools to participate in decisions affecting their environment. Education creates power. Informed communities are harder to deceive with greenwashing.

We're also beginning video production to bring these stories to life through documentary-style content. Video allows us to show—not just tell—the beauty of what we're protecting and the reality of what we're fighting against. From aerial footage of biological corridors to interviews with affected communities, video will help audiences understand the stakes in ways that text alone cannot.

The Challenge

Costa Rica's environmental laws are world-class. Their enforcement is not. Excellent legal frameworks exist to protect forests, but inconsistent application allows destructive projects to proceed unchecked.

Costa Rica's forest protection law is clear: once land is forested, land use may not be changed. Whether the land was pastured decades ago doesn't matter—the designation of land as forest is intended to protect it. Yet developers exploit loopholes and weak enforcement to bulldoze irreplaceable ecosystems for luxury housing that local communities cannot afford.

With every forest fragmented, every tree cut, every ravine filled, every creek diverted—the Brunca Region becomes less pristine and less special. Left unchecked, rampant development will eventually destroy the wildness that makes this region irreplaceable. We bridge the enforcement gap through strategic litigation and community education, ensuring existing laws deliver their promised protection.

The Brunca Region—encompassing the cantons of Pérez Zeledón, Osa, Golfito, Corredores, Coto Brus, and Buenos Aires—harbors biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth. Endemic species exist only in these forests, and wildlife corridors connecting fragmented ecosystems are essential for their survival.

Thank You to Our Partners