Green Coast Mystique

Less obvious than the banana and palm oil plantations that line the coastal highways are government subsidized teak farms. These expensive hardwoods are planted close together, forcing the saplings to compete for light by growing straighter and taller than they would naturally. This allows longer boards to be cut with less effort, and results in fewer knots and weak spots.

It also allows the teak farms to undercut wild harvested teak prices, lumbered illegally from rainforest clearcuts. (The growing expense is offset by not having to slash roads into the wilderness, and also because many of the the trees clearcut are softwoods with low prices.) If the numbers are to be believed, this practice has cut illegal deforestation by 80%. Wheras its' neighbors are finding themselves with increasingly smaller rainforests, Costa Rica actually has more now than twenty years ago. Which means hopefully the green coast's mystique will last for years to come.