Area de Conservación Guanacaste

The Area de Conservación Guanacaste protects the best surviving tropical dry forest between Central America and northern Mexico, alongside key refuges for rare and endangered plants and animals across both land and sea. UNESCO inscribed it in 1999 and later enlarged it with the 15,000-hectare Santa Elena property, recognizing a site where major ecological processes still unfold in terrestrial and marine-coastal settings alike.