Costa Rica

In 2002, about 38 percent of Central America's total land area was used as permanent pasture, and this area had expanded over the previous decade in the three project countries (Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua) at a rate of between four and nine percent, mostly at the expense of tropical fores

Costa Rica experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation worldwide during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1950, forests covered more than half of the country; by 1995, forest cover had declined to 25 percent of the national territory.