Central Pacific Conservation Area (ACOPAC), Costa Rica Carara
National Park is located in Costa Rica's Central Pacific
Conservation Area or ACOPAC (Area de Conservacion Pacifico
Central), with an area of 5,242 hectares. This protected
wildlife area is considered to be a living laboratory where you
can study the structure and functioning of the tropical eco-
systems and the relationships between them. What is today known
as the Carara National Park was part of a huge landholding
called Hacienda Coyolar (one of the largest privately held
tracts of land ever in the country), which extended from Orotina
and ended in Parrita. It had thousands of hectares and belonged
to Dr. Fernando Castro Cervantes. Dr. Castro years later sold
the land to the IDA (Agrarian Development Institute) and later
the IDA transferred to the land to the National Park Service
(SPN in Spanish). On April 27, 1978, the land was categorized as
a biological reserve. Due to the need and influx of numerous
visitors in 1990, however, the management