The World’s Rainforests Are Vanishing. In This One Country, They’re Growing Back

For several decades now, the story of the world’s rainforests has been the same tragic one: These iconic, animal-filled ecosystems are getting cut down to make way for farms and ranches, roads and mines. And it doesn’t appear to be changing. In 2024, the most recent year of global forest data, the tropics lost a record 16.6 million acres of primary forest, largely to fires and agriculture. More than half of that recent loss was in Brazil and Bolivia.

But one country has a very different narrative: Costa Rica.

In the late 20th century, Costa Rica — a Central American nation a little smaller than West Virginia — had one of the highest deforestation rates in the world. The country was losing more than 100,000 acres a year. And by 1985, forests covered less than 25 percent of its area, down from closer to three-quarters just a few decades earlier.