{"id":10,"date":"2026-03-09T17:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/?p=10"},"modified":"2026-03-13T04:03:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T04:03:36","slug":"impacts-on-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Costs of Tourism on the Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Costa Rica is a highly visited tourist destination due to its unique and beautiful scenery that spans the entire country. Tourists typically go there to explore the native wildlife and the surrounding scenery. This allows tourists to invade the areas where wildlife reside more commonly, such as the national parks within Costa Rica. This engagement with the wildlife is largely encouraged because it is the main driver of what brings in more tourists. However, this engagement between humans and wildlife leads to unnatural occurrences between the two. In an article that goes over the environmental impacts of tourism in Costa Rica, an informant states, “I saw a female raccoon run beside me and stand inches from my friends and put on a cute show… I had also watched monkeys ‘smile’ for pictures and run down the beach and steal packed lunches from tourists who were busy swimming. These were very unnatural behaviors for these animals. Raccoons are naturally nocturnal, so seeing one during the day was extremely peculiar” (Kleszczynski 19). Having wild animals make changes in their instincts and daily structure is harmful to their larger populations. These animals will have to end up relying on these humans if tourism like this is continuously encouraged and provided. No population of animals can sustain entirely on humans unless domesticated, and because of that, it can lead to certain species that interact with humans more becoming endangered due to the fact that they rely on their natural instincts less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Celeste River Waterfall, Photo by Sterling Lanier via Unsplash<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two other environmentally related impacts that are currently affecting Costa Rica are pollution and depletion of resources. They go hand in hand as they have come from the same cause. The most common buildings that derive from tourism are the hotels and resorts those traveling stay. These buildings are typically massive in size, meaning they take up many different resources, whether it is the materials required to build the resort or the large quantities of water and electricity it takes to keep it running. Having to use so much water for a singular building leaves the rest of the city with very little to use, and it isn’t just hotels using so much. In the article that goes over ecotourism in Costa Rica, it is stated, “In Guanacaste, for example, they are having huge trouble with the golf course because there are huge hotels and to have the really nice green grass, they have to water the land every single day during the dry season. And keeping the grass green during the dry season means that a lot of people in the town are not having water for six months because all the water is being used towards the golf course” (Kleszczynski 16). Water is one of the essential resources that people need, and having entire towns and cities go without it for so long just allows tourists to engage with a sport that is completely unnecessary. The same article goes over how even with ecotourism, there are issues with pollution, as well as it references, “Successful ecotourism initiatives may draw higher numbers of travelers, thus increasing negative environmental impacts such as increased solid waste generation, habitat disturbance, and forest degradation from trail erosion” (Stem, Lassoie, Lee, & Deshler, 2003). No matter how effective ecotourism may try to be, if it brings in a considerable number of people, there will be large drawbacks from the overuse of the resources, which will thus lead to more pollution, especially in the cities of Costa Rica. Although ecotourism has the environment in mind, it isn’t always perfect, and the root cause is usually just the idea of tourism in and of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Costa Rica is a highly visited tourist destination due to its unique and beautiful scenery that spans the entire country. Tourists typically go there to explore the native wildlife and the surrounding scenery. This allows tourists to invade the areas where wildlife reside more commonly, such as the national parks within Costa Rica. This engagement … Continue reading Costs of Tourism on the Environment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15099,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-impacts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15099"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/costaricasustainabletourismproject\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}