Saving the Milwaukee Rain Forest

Early in the morning, humans in the rain forest may awaken to the call of the howler monkey, sounding for all the world like an outboard motor being started on a lake on a cold Wisconsin morning.

A squadron of noisy green parrots may rocket overhead.

"No one visits the rain forest without being overwhelmed by its evidence of life, by its diversity, by the precisely intricate ways plants related to animals and each other. It is a visual, audible, warm and humid symphony whose millions of notes were tuned into delicate harmonies over millions of years by the process of evolution."

Or so I wrote for The Milwaukee Journal in 1986, after spending 10 days at La Tirimbina in Costa Rica with a group of scientists and artists from the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Suggestions by some bankers and politicians that the Tirimbina Rainforest Center, located in the northeastern part of Costa Rica, might be sold to help bail out the mismanaged Milwaukee Public Museum have horrified those familiar with the history, biology and educational value of the center.

We would be selling a tract of precious rain forest that was bought not by taxpayers but by private donors, that has not been a drain on the resources of the museum but has been largely self- sufficient and that has a long and irreplaceable connection to Wisconsin.

From a biological point of view, one connection dates back thousands of years. Costa Rica harbors perhaps half of the species of warblers that summer in Wisconsin and winter in Central America. It is the winter refuge for Baltimore Orioles, some thrushes, hawks, grosbeaks and other birds that Wisconsin residents watch seasonally at bird feeders or in forests and meadows.

To Wisconsin bird lovers, therefore, it is as important to protect the tropical rain forest as it is to protect large tracts of Wisconsin woods and forests.

When I first saw Tirimbina in 1986, the road from San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, was narrow and rough and the drive in four-wheel- drive vehicles required three to four hours through nearly solid rain forest. The last hour was over a nearly impassable tract entered by crossing a rickety suspension bridge with a bouncing plank deck high above the Sarapiqui River.

By 1998, my fourth and last visit, the road from San Jose was a major highway and banana, coffee, pineapple and ornamental plant plantations had replaced much of the rain forest, demonstrating Costa Rica’s version of a worldwide phenomenon.

Biologist E. O. Wilson wrote in 1992 that more than half of the world’s original rain forests had been destroyed by 1989 and that the rate of loss was equivalent to the state of Florida each year. There is no reason to think that has slowed since.

From a scientific research point of view, Wisconsin has been connected to the Tirimbina for almost 35 years, since Allen Young, then assistant professor of biology at Lawrence University, Appleton, began his research on tropical cicadas, morpho butterflies and later the midges that pollinate cacao trees.

The owners of Tirimbina at the time were the late J. Robert Hunter and Nancy Hunter.

Hunter was an agronomist who was experimenting with new crops to help small farmers and he was growing black pepper and vanilla on half of his farm, called Finca La Tirimbina. The other half he maintained as forest.

The Hunters invited Young to use the farm as a staging area for his research, thus beginning a long friendship that led directly to Wisconsin’s most dramatic connection to Tirimbina.

In 1986, Young, by then curator of invertebrate zoology at the Milwaukee Public Museum, led the expedition to collect and model the plants and animals that would be used in the museum’s stunning rain forest exhibit.

The Hunters retired in the early 1990s and sold the working half of Tirimbina to a local farmer who raised ornamental tropical plants to adorn North American and European offices and hotel lobbies.

Hunter wanted to preserve the rain forest half and approached his friend Young, who went to work.

Young convinced the late John A. (Jack) Puelicher, retired banker and amateur naturalist, to pay half of the $250,000 purchase price. Puelicher, in turn ,convinced Lynde Uihlein, a major supporter of the Riveredge Nature Center in Newburg, to provide the other half.

Milwaukee attorney Michael Spector contributed his expertise by helping to set up a Costa Rica corporation to hold the land and a U.S. board to operate the center.

Joan Spector, Michael’s wife and a Riveredge teacher-naturalist, became executive director and fund-raiser. She has since retired.

Last year, Riveredge assumed a lesser role, but still retains two members of the Tirimbina board and manages programs that offer science-based environmental education to Costa Rican and Wisconsin students. Nate Kraucunas, the museum’s curator of birds and mammals, spends half-time as Tirimbina operations officer.

Today, the forest has a Costa Rican staff of guides and naturalists, rangers and workers.

Visitors enter it on a suspension pedestrian bridge over the river.

Overnight accommodations are simple, centered on a bunkhouse that served the museum staff in 1986.

To walk into a mature rain forest for the first time is to enter a magnificent cathedral of life.

Such a forest is too complex to be absorbed at once, so human eyes and ears must fix on specific phenomena, all the time being aware that each of small piece is part of a larger symphony.

It is humbling moment that reduces the observer in size and attitude to the properly small role of humans in the wholeness of nature.

The experience is hard to put into words. It must be experienced.

Fortunately, through the formation of the Tirimbina Rainforest Center, many do. It was visited by almost 10,000 persons last year, including 3,000 students.

Preserving and nurturing Tirimbina for education, science and for future generations is one of the most far-sighted acts of generosity the citizens of the Milwaukee area have ever done.

The thought that this gem can be put on the auction block to pay debts incurred by others is political and economic cynicism at its extreme.

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Paul G. Hayes wrote about environment, energy and natural sciences for The Milwaukee Journal from 1962 to 1995. Now retired, he lives in Cedarburg and concentrates his volunteer activities on protecting Wisconsin landscapes.

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