Santa Rosa National Park, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Santa Rosa National Park protects some of the last remaining tropical dry forest in the world. It is connected to Guanacaste National Park Orosi and the Cacao volcanoes. Joined together these two parks contain tremendous floral/fauna diversity and encompass marine, rainforest, the Orosi cloud forest, mountain terrain and volcanic habitats. Together these two parks protect enough land to ensure sufficiently large habitats for wide-ranging species such as jaguars and mountain lions while simultaneously creating a biological corridor for birds and insects to make local seasonal migrations between the dry forest and the evergreen cloud and rain forests. There are two important sea turtle nesting beaches in Santa Rosa, Naranjo and Nancite. The latter is one of two beaches in Costa Rica (the other is Ostional) where Pacific Ridley Sea Turtles come ashore each year in large arribadas to lay their eggs. © Flickr/Ash Morgan