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Tropical Solutions

A circus of life performs daily in the rain forest of Costa Rica. In the high, green canopy, toucans and howler monkeys perch among flowering orchids and giant leaves. Snakes glide through streams as armies of leaf-cutting ants march to nests on the thick forest floor.

But the show's over in some spots. Charred trees lie on bare patches of land. The noisy jungle has fallen silent, robbed of animals and birds. Costa Rica's rain forest, like many others in the world, is vanishing.

Last month 11 high school students from Connecticut's Forman Rain Forest Project arrived in Costa Rica to study the delicate ecosystem. They hope that their research will find ways to slow the destruction.

Planting New Ideas
Banana, coffee and timber companies are partly responsible for the jungle's disappearance. But local farmers who clear the land for crops and cattle also cause deforestation.

"They just burn up the land and move on," says teacher Wendy Welshans, who has led the project for five years. She and her students hope to show families less damaging ways to make a living in the rain forest. For instance, some farmers are now raising butterflies for sale to collectors.

The Forman group, which studied tropical ecology in the classroom for six months, spent two weeks on a Costa Rican nature reserve called Rara Avis (Rah-rah Ah-viss). Among the subjects studied: poison-arrow frogs, scorpions and basilisk lizards, which run across water.

One team captured venom from the bullet ant. Its sting "feels like you have been shot by a bullet!" says Phil Kerr, 18. The group's research may help scientists develop a medicine to stop the sting. Farming families could sell the medicine instead of misusing the land.

Costa Ricans may also one day sell the stained-glass-window palm. Once a popular house plant from Panama, it had been thought to be extinct since the 1930s. The rare plant was recently rediscovered in Costa Rica, but digging it up would harm the jungle's ecosystem. Says Kirk Round, 17: "We hope to find a sensible way to reproduce the plant."

Now back home, the students are sharing their finds with other schools and scientists across the country. Next year a new group will travel to Costa Rica to continue the research.

Scientist Amos Bien, who runs the Rara Avis reserve, calls the Forman group "ambassadors to the rain forest." Their work, he says, "raises awareness in the U.S. and gives us important new knowledge."

Next: Open Wide, Don't Bite!