COSTA RICAN PARKS A RESEARCHER'S VIEW

Abstract

A park whose flora and fauna are unkno ..... n and uncataloged can be compared to an excellent li brary whose books have no titles. no authors, and no call numbers. This is one of the primary reasons why Winnie HaJ1wachs. a graduate student from Cornell Universit y, and I have been surveying the moths of Costa Rica for the past four years. We estim ate that there are some 9,000 moth species in the cou ntry, most of them occurring in the national parks and similar permanent reserv~s-the locat ions of nearly all of our 23 intensive survey sites.