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Monteverde Conservation League U.S. (MCLUS) is a non-profit organization founded in April 2002 that was formed primarily to support the work and programs of the Monteverde Conservation League (MCL) in Monteverde, Costa Rica, which owns and maintains 54,000+ acres of the Bosque Eterno de Los Niños (Children's Eternal Rain Forest). Their goal is to aid the MCL and other organizations in their efforts "to support the conservation and rehabilitation of tropical ecosystems and their biodiversity."[1]
History[edit]
In 1951, a group of American Quakers immigrated to Costa Rica looking for a peaceful country in which to live. They settled in a mountainous area and set aside 1,400 acres of forest at the top of the mountains, never to be cut in order to protect the water source they needed for farming. They gave this first Costa Rican reserve the name El Bosque Eterno, the Eternal Forest, and named their community Monteverde (Green Mountain).
Then in the 1970s, the biologist George Powell went to Monteverde to study the Resplendent Quetzal. He encouraged conservation organizations to protect more land in the area: The Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve was eventually created. One of the Quakers, Wolf Guindon, played an important role in facilitating the land purchases, which expanded the protected area.
In 1987, Eha Kern, a school teacher in Fagervik, Sweden taught her students about tropical rainforests. They were fascinated by the wildlife, but concerned when they viewed TV documentaries that described chopped and burned rainforests. They wanted to do something to help. An American botanist, Dr. Sharon Kinsman, professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, was spending time in Sweden after studying the cloud forest ecosystem in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. When Kern met Kinsman, she invited her to come to her classroom to share the story of the Costa Rican forest with the children. Kinsman’s photos sparked the children’s desire to help protect the rainforest, and they began to raise money by putting on plays, having bunny-hopping contests, giving pony rides, and selling home-baked goodies. They set a goal to save 25 acres, but they greatly exceeded their goal.
As more children heard about the students' plan, more schools began to contribute; thus Barnens Regnskog (“Children’s Rain Forest” in Swedish) was born.[2] The Swedish government matched funds raised by the children. In the first year they raised over $100,000.
Kinsman helped arrange for threatened forest around Monteverde to be purchased through the Monteverde Conservation League. She also founded “Children’s Rainforest USA” to help kids in the United States protect the forest in Costa Rica. Students in the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Spain and Japan also created organizations to help. Eventually, children in 44 countries contributed.
By 1995 El Bosque Eterno de los Niños (Children’s Eternal Rainforest), commonly referred to as the BEN, protected 54,000 acres and had become the largest private reserve in Costa Rica. After realizing the need to pay forest guards to protect the land from poachers, the Monteverde Conservation League decided not to buy any more land.
In 2002 the Monteverde Conservation League U.S., Inc (MCLUS) was founded to help raise money for additional land purchase, more guards, and environmental education. By 2008 MCLUS had raised over a half a million dollars. A group of students in Vermont began to raise money to buy nearby land to reforest. They call themselves the “Change the World Kids.”