If you’ve been to Selva Verde Lodge you may well know about the Sarapiquí Conservation Learning Center, commonly known as the Learning Center. Perhaps you enjoyed a charla or visit with a local community member at their home during a trip with Road Scholar, or perhaps you planted a tree at a local farm while visiting with your high school.

We are excited to announce that in late August or early September of 2023, Selva Verde Lodge will be inaugurating eight new rooms. The location of these new rooms is near the bridge crossing the Sarapiquí River. This will bring the total number of Sarapiquí rooms to 48.

Left to right: María del Mar Villarreal Zamora, Wilson Huertas and Valery SalasGlobal Big Day (GBD) 2022 was on October 8. For those who aren’t familiar with it, this is a celebration in which large numbers of people across many countries observe as many species as they can in a 24-hour period to give a picture of the current state of bird populations from around the world. This data helps to inform policies and to protect birds in their habitats.

The night of September 9, 2022, during a night hike, our guide Randy Alvarado managed to spot in the primary forest of Selva Verde Lodge a species that is exceptionally hard to find in Costa Rica, a velvet worm (Onicóforo in Spanish). This is one of the oldest living beings in evolutionary terms, as it is known they exist since the Cambrian Period, more than 515 million years ago.

The bird migration has started, and hundreds of species have begun to take flight mainly from North America down to Central and South America. The migration is a movement that birds engage in to seek food, better climate conditions, and even reproduction. Out of the 929 bird species in Costa Rica, approximately 250 are migratory birds. The geographic location of Costa Rica makes the country have a great diversity of flora and fauna, especially avifauna.

A new project of the Sarapiquí Conservation Learning Center (CECOS) aims to protect critical habitat for the endangered Great Green Macaw and other wildlife while also providing sustainable income to local residents.

Award-winning nature photographer Krisztina Scheeff led a free photography workshop at the Sarapiquí Conservation Learning Center tailored especially for naturalist guides to provide them with the opportunity to learn or improve their photography skills. The workshop was open to all skill levels, with a main focus on wildlife and nature photography, as the growing popularity of nature photography in the travel industry has made it a valuable skill for those working in this tourism specialty.