Page 69 - NORTHERN GUANACASTE TOURIST GUIDE

Protected Areas
Guanacaste Norte (Guanacaste de Altura) includes three Conservation Areas: the Guanacaste Conservation Area (ACG), which was declared a World Heritage Site by
UNESCO in 1999. This conservation area includes Santa Rosa National Park, Rincón de la Vieja National Park, Guanacaste National Park (no visitors allowed), Horizontes Experimental
Forest Station and Bahía Junquillal Wildlife Refuge.
Two protected areas that belong to the Arenal Tempisque Conservation Area are also found in Guanacaste de Altura: Miravalles National Park and Lomas Barbudal Biological
Reserve.
Tempisque Conservation Area, where the Iguanita National Wildlife Refuge is located, also covers part of northern
Guanacaste.
The Guanacaste Conservation Area contains four of the five main ecosystems of the tropics: marine/coastal, dry forest, cloud forest and rainforest, representing the only area in the
New World to harbor such a diversity of ecosystems.
Its location on the continental divide and the parks of the Guanacaste Conservation Area make northern Guanacaste a very popular site for birdwatching (with
a strong Pacific influence, but also Caribbean species).
The heart of the Guanacaste Conservation Area (ACG) is a single uninterrupted biogeographical block of protected wilderness areas with an area of some 163,000 hectares, which extends from the marine area around the Islas Murciélago archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, through the Santa Rosa plateau to the summit of the Orosi, Cacao and Rincón de la Vieja volcanoes of the Guanacaste Volcanic Range and continuing to
the lowlands on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.
This biogeographic block, which represents approximately 2% of the country and 13% of the province of Guanacaste, is home to approximately 335,000 species of terrestrial organisms, equivalent to 2.6% of the world’s biodiversity. In other words, there are more land species in the ACG than in northern Mexico, the United States and Canada
combined.
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