Costa Rica RPCV Nancy Aitken founded Project Campanario
Read and comment on this story from the Charleston Gazette on RPCV Nancy Aitken who founded Project Campanario in Costa Rica. Reachable only by water, it's a wild motorboat ride in a heavy downpour up the Sierpe River at high tide through eerie and impressive mangrove forests to the camp. Founded by Nancy Aitken, a former Peace Corps volunteer, the "field station" was wonderfully isolated, with one solar battery providing the electricity: nighttime meant candles and careful stepping around large nocturnal frogs standing like sentinels on landings and steps. Read the story at:
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Southern sister: ; W.Va. native ponders lessons learned from 'eco-tourism' in Costa Rica
Feb 2, 2003 - Sunday Gazette - Mail; Charleston, W.Va.
Author(s): Gerald Beller
THE guidebooks always compare Costa Rica with West Virginia.
Size is the proximate reason, but mountainous terrain, extensive forests, and wild, delicate beauty hidden within regions long thought peripheral to the rest of the world also seem to evoke a common fate.
History suggests another common theme: extensive environmental devastation connected to certain exports - largely coal in West Virginia and logging, cattle, and bananas in Costa Rica.
Environmental crisis and economic need have even suggested a common remedy: that lucrative import known as the tourist. Or more particularly, the "eco-tourist" who appreciates untrammeled nature, rendering it profitable and off-limits to "foreign" profiteers.
The truth is that Costa Rica has traveled much further down this road than West Virginia. In an effort to better understand the possibilities of tourism at the grass-roots level, 13 high school and college teachers from the Mountain State went to Costa Rica during the summer of 2002 under a Fulbright-Hays grant from the federal Department of Education.
We wanted to examine the cultural, social, and economic implications of community-based conservation efforts designed to attract eco-tourist dollars.
The Green Republic
Costa Rica's regard for the economic potential of its own wild beauty has reaped huge economic dividends: its tourist revenues now vastly exceed more traditional exports, such as coffee and bananas.
The country has an international reputation as the "Green Republic" for its innovative and extensive system of parks and natural reserves. More than 25 percent of its surface area is given official protection from all direct economic exploitation - a larger percentage than any other country on earth.
To match such an effort in America, conservation historian Sterling Evans suggests that the United States would have to set aside an area as large as Texas and Oklahoma combined.
Yet Costa Rica remains under extreme environmental pressure. Fifteen years ago, deforestation rates exceeded that of any other Latin American nation. If West Virginia today has 80 percent of its surface area covered in forests, Costa Rica has only 43 or 25 percent, depending on whether you believe the government or outside experts - down from 90 percent in 1950.
Much more important than loss of forests is the related loss of biodiversity - a loss which has global consequences. Within an area amounting to less than one-hundredth of one percent of the earth's land mass, Costa Rica has up to 850 bird species alone, which is more than the entire continental United States.
Trumping a global industry
One of our stops was Meso-america, a private research and study institute based in San Jose and headed by Linda Holland, an American expatriate who organized our itinerary.
Our group was told by the former Minister of Environment and Energy that tourism is at the center of his country's future, and that "biodiversity is the axis of national tourism." His government serves as the "invisible facilitator" of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and local communities working together to conserve resources, said the former minister.
Our visits to some of the most isolated (hence, relatively unspoiled) regions of Costa Rica were intended to test this approach. Were local conservation efforts, aided by NGOs and ostensibly encouraged by the government, working?
If so, could comparable efforts work in West Virginia? Rick Holland, an international consultant raised in Costa Rica, was our guide, providing us with expert advice, superb translations, and logistical connections.
Our first stop was Talamanca in the Southern Caribbean region of Costa Rica. Our guide was Helen Simmons, eco-tourism director for Biologico Corrido-Talamanaca. This NGO works with government agencies, wildlife refuges, indigenous "Indian" reserves, public parks, and innumerable private reserves to halt the increasing fragmentation of ecosystems within an area extending from Costa Rica's highest mountain to reefs and wetlands along the coast.
Puerto Viejo, our home for two nights, was a low-budget, crowded tourist beach famous for successfully opposing U.S.-sponsored oil explorations off the coast - a perfect example of local economic self-interest trumping a global industry.
Just a couple of kilometers away up a narrow muddy road we encountered the Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve, home to 450 people threatened by nearby land squatters and illegal logging. Local efforts include raising iguanas in tiny nursery tents and adult tanks for profit in order to reduce the incentive for poaching.
Also nearby was a co-operative set up by women - in the face of the skepticism of the men in their lives - that promotes organic farming.
Newman's cocoa source
Our next stop was more dramatic. The Talamanca Reserve, with 9,000 inhabitants from the Bribri and Cabecar Indian tribes, is the largest of the 16 indigenous "buffer zones" located next to endangered national parks.
We crossed streams in our van where bridges had been wiped out, and used a dugout canoe and banana truck to go places where electricity had arrived only within the last 10 years.
We listened to the local curandero - or medicine man - tell us that children didn't get sick in his area because they "have a lot of stuff living in them" to ensure good health.
People lived in hardwood houses on stilts, no doubt supplementing a meager income with the pigs, horses, and chickens we saw in their yards. More hopefully, we learned that the reserve is the largest exporter of organic cacao to the world - including "Paul Newman's Own" chocolate sold in the U.S.
We then drove through extensive Chiquita (previously United Fruit) banana fields and company housing to find a walkway through wetlands. There, we found water running two feet deep under a boardwalk extending through a thick rainforest developed from a recovered banana plantation and an old growth area.
Our destination was Casacode, a 29-person capacity lodge created as a project of a local farmer co-operative set up by local residents as an alternative to plantation agriculture.
The main living room was a huge gallery with no windows: hummingbirds showed up wherever we looked, bats flew in and out at dusk, and howler monkeys entertained us with loud guttural roars as they went crashing through the forest canopy like drunken maniacs.
Working closely with scientists from universities and NGOs, founder Jose Luis Zuniga has worked extensively with experimental trees and other plants to add to the revenues gained from eco- tourists. When Chiquita tried to buy him out, he told them he had buried his childrens' umbilical cords under his own trees and was not about to leave.
With open arms
A brief return to San Jose was followed by another long ride to the southwestern Osa peninsula, an ecologically unique area reaching like a giant toucan beak into the Pacific. At its center is Corcovado National Park, where the last stand of old growth rainforest on the Pacific coast is located.
Corcovado is also home to 400 bird species and 10 percent of the mammal species in the Western hemisphere, in an area equivalent to one-thousandth of one percent of the landmass of North and South America.
Trees large enough to suggest we were on another planet greeted us, as well as flocks of scarlet macaws, in an area profoundly endangered by multinational timber companies and gold prospectors.
Our visit to Rancho Quemada, a community of 40 families founded by landless people seeking gold and farmland 40 years ago at the edge of Corcovado, was facilitated by Vivienne Solis. She is manager of a professional co-operative set up to provide advice and mediation on "sustainable development" for people confronted by economic needs and government environmental restrictions.
Feelings ran high: the director of the local conservation area had been kept out at gunpoint, and we felt privileged to be accepted with open arms.
Isolation, economic desperation, and unique beauty encouraged some in the community to think of tourism as their savior; others were not so sure. Tourists would have to be rather rugged characters, uninterested in the niceties.
A show of tourist possibilities included a ride by dugout canoe through a narrow lagoon filled with dozens of egret nests loaded with chicks; we also saw crocodiles waiting in the shallows.
It was a bittersweet experience. Like most small farmers harmed by the shift of subsidies toward nontraditional exports, mass tourism, tightened credit policies, and restrictive environmental policies, many members of the community were very distrustful of new eco-tourist schemes that couldn't promise quick returns.
It also became evident that many members of the community wanted to grow and sell non-native trees to the gigantic Stone Container Corporation of Chicago for pulp.
Our next stop was Project Campanario, on the Pacific coast. Reachable only by water, we undertook a wild motorboat ride in a heavy downpour up the Sierpe River at high tide through eerie and impressive mangrove forests. We came out into a choppy, swelling ocean where we bounced our way for an hour and a half to a beachfront biological reserve for eco-tourists and students.
Founded by Nancy Aitken, a former Peace Corps volunteer, the "field station" was wonderfully isolated, with one solar battery providing the electricity: nighttime meant candles and careful stepping around large nocturnal frogs standing like sentinels on landings and steps.
The network of trails bringing us into neighboring Corcovado Park provided direct contact with gigantic trees, lovely waterfalls, scrambling monkeys, army ants, scarlet macaws, and a boa constrictor.
Quaker roots
The final leg of our trip was the northern mountain region of Monteverde, located on the continental divide, where western dry forests broken by pasture lands meet wet eastern forests.
Originally, the Quakers who settled in the area set aside forest land because they wanted a protected watershed for a hydroelectric complex which could help them with a local cheese factory. Scientists and organizations like the World Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy convinced them to help set aside an additional 27,000 acres to protect against land squatters, hunters, and poachers.
The result was what many consider one of the best examples in the world of community-based conservation efforts utilizing eco-tourism as a profit-making venture.
West Virginians know about clouds which settle into mountain valleys, houses accessible only by isolated paths, and roadways along ridges that open out into fabulous vistas. The Quakers added to this setting a deep social conscience melded into a sharp business sense: everyone who has a connection with the cheese factory and the related hog farm (created to use up the whey left over from cheese production) is given stock ownership; no one is allowed to own more than 15 percent of the total.
Dairy farmers are encouraged, not required, to use only native trees as windbreakers, which can provide a continuous habitat for threatened species-and they have gradually done so voluntarily.
A women's co-operative has also substantially increased income for poor residents by selling artwork - largely clothing - to tourists, thereby enhancing the kind of independence and sense of self-worth which reduces spousal abuse.
A long discussion with the descendants of the Quaker founders made it clear that the growing tourist industry has provided real threats to sustainability. However, unlike many of the other regions we visited, Monteverde seems to be dealing with the problems of success.
Lessons learned
What lessons did we draw in Costa Rica for eco-tourism in West Virginia? I cannot speak for others in our group, but let me suggest the following simple observations:
* "Eco-tourism" is not a panacea: it may work for some people, but not for others. Usually, it was simply one way of making a living among others.
* Government initiatives, although important in setting up Costa Rica's wonderful park system, are much less important than committed people pushing their own vision in a supportive political environment.
* Eco-tourism works best when people are not forced to conform to the expectations of outsiders, whether put forth by environmentalists, business people, or government regulators.
* Eco-tourism works best as a local, community-based enterprise which does not rely upon large numbers of tourists to make a profit.
While in Costa Rica, I encountered a Fulbright scholar on her way to study mental health problems in Peru. When I told her where I was from, she immediately became excited: she had been to Costa Rica on other occasions, but insisted that she had never encountered a place as "beautiful" as West Virginia.
This was the final lesson of our trip to Costa Rica: like the hard-working pioneers of eco-tourism in Costa Rica, we need to take pride in what we already have if we are to understand the riches that lay waiting for us.
Gerald Beller is a professor of political science at West Virginia State College. His trip to Costa Rica was funded by a competitive grant which he and Jim Natsis, international coordinator for WVSC, obtained from the Fulbright-Hays program of the U.S. Department of Education. More about Project Campanario
Proyecto Campanario is a conservation initiative begun by a small group of teachers who began their lives in Latin America over 20 years ago with the Peace Corps. The group, as we were, along with some Costa Rican friends, purchased a spectacular tract of rainforest just north of Corcovado National Park in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, and established the Campanario Biological Reserve in order to contribute to global conservation in a personal way.
We have dedicated our efforts to:
- Conserve biodiversity.
- Support tropical research.
- Promote environmental education.
Since Project Campanario’s creation in 1990, with the Campanario Biological Reserve as the central focus, eco-tourist, students and researchers have visited our lodge and network of trails. Join us on our treks through majestic forests which drip with bromeliads and vines, and see shy creatures creep through the diverse forest understory. Conduct your own personal study of one of the hundreds of species of flora and fauna which the reserve supports.
Participate in a short tropical ecology course in this remote rainforest, and come with us on trips through the largest mangrove forest in Central America. Join us on scuba or snorkeling trips to the clear waters off Isla del Caño, and visit famed Corcovado National Park.
Different programs and activities have emerged to put the mission into action. Project Campanario is engaged in 10 different programs:
- conservation of the Campanario Biological Reserve to maintain the eco-systems with a minimum of human impact
- international tropical ecology courses and camps offered to university and high school student groups as the “intense field trip” to give first-hand experience in field studies in the tropical rainforest
- national environmental education programs for Costa Rican students to study their tropical forests through in-country exchange programs and sponsorship by local companies.
- eco-tourism adventures for visitors looking for a vacation with a purpose,
- volunteer program offering a minimum 3-week stay exchanging part of their room and board for work in the reserve.
- research and species inventories carried out by national and international investigators, and by Campanario volunteers
- local community involvement and service projects to support the nearby schools, to offer short courses to the local community, and to work with the park officials.
- regional level involvement in tourism bureaus, development associations, and other conservation NGO’s to continue conservation efforts of the Osa Peninsula
- national level involvement through the Costa Rican Network of Private Natural Reserves which supports and defends private conservation in Costa Rica and throughout the Central American Isthmus.
- expansion of the Campanario Biological Reserve through acquiring nearby tracts of land under pressures of “development”
You can become part of this special effort to protect the biodiversity of this corner of the world.
The Campanario Biological Reserve is located in the humid tropical Pacific lowlands of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica and stretches nearly 150 acres from sea level to 155 meters above. It is proud to support many of the diverse habitats needed for the wide array of mammals (at least 139 species), reptiles and amphibians (at least 117 species), birds (over 350 species), and insects (too many to count!) that can be found in this remote area where no roads nor electricity have reached. Many of these species are rare or endangered and include: tapir, giant anteater, white-faced monkey, tayra, jaguar, puma, white-lipped peccary, pilot whale, hump-back whale, scarlet macaw, and chestnut-mandibled toucan, among others.
We are pleased to announce that the Black - cheeked Ant Tanager, one of six species of birds endemic the Osa Peninsula, can be found within the reserve. This bird can be found nowhere else in the world.
View inhabitants of the Osa Peninsula.Trails through the primary and successionary forests weave through lush vegetation, including over 120 different tree species which have already been identified within Campanario itself. The Reserve has three permanent streams and a beautiful coastline with 4 small pristine beaches, clear warm surf and several rocky points, one of which protects the small bay which is the gateway year-round to the Reserve.
The mean daily temperature at the Field Station is 24-25 C (75-77 F). An average year sees 4-5 meters of rainfall, making Campanario one of the wettest areas in Costa Rica (and the world).
Hike trails at your own pace.In addition, Campanario lies in close proximity to five national protected areas (see map on first page). Trips to Campanario pass through the Sierpe-Terraba mangrove reserve, and both Cocovado National Park and Isla del Caño Biological Reserve are within 1 hour of the field station. Isla del Caño also offers trails to indigenous burial grounds and spectacularly clear waters for snorkeling and scuba diving.
Proyecto Campanario is proud to be part of the biological corridors protecting the biodiversity of the Osa Peninsula.
Proyecto Campanario’s third mission is to promote environmental education to students of all ages, both local and international. To this end Campanario has 4 basic offerings to accommodate different age levels, interests, and different lengths of stay. Please select the program best suited for you: Give the gift of a nature trek to your family.
* Ecological Tourism Expeditions for the adult or family group. * Rainforest Conservation Camps for families and/or middle and high school students. * Tropical Ecology Student Courses for university, high school, and middle school students. * Tropical Ecology Teachers’ Programs.
Get away for retreats and your own personal adventure.
ECOLOGICAL TOURISM EXPEDITIONS
Are for enviromentally minded individuals, families, groups of friends, and corporate executives who want to plan their vacations, annual get-togethers and retreats at Campanario. You can spend your days hiking with our naturalists, or you might also choose to go fishing , swimming, snorkeling.
Be sure to plan time for just relaxing on the beach or in a hammock.
Our goal is to have you absorb as many of the sights, sounds, and smells of the rainforest as possible. A minimum of a 4-day, 3-night trip is necessary, but a 6-day, 5-night trip is recommended to more fully absorb the wonders of the area. Click here for typical schedule
RAINFOREST CONSERVATION CAMPS
Become involved in environmental education.Conservation Camps are special programs we've designed for families and middle and high school students. The camps are usually scheduled during school vacations and last 6 days and 5 nights. They are limited in size to ensure adequate instruction and supervision.
Students of all ages participate in extensive hikes and workshops in the rainforest to appreciate all its wealth. Evening sessions look into the history of the area and discuss deforestation and other social pressures affecting the tropics. Fishing, snorkeling, and visits to other areas are also included. Don't worry, there’s some beach time in the schedule also.
TROPICAL ECOLOGY STUDENT COURSES
Tropical Ecology Student Courses for university, high school, and middle school students are given usually during the school year as serious "field trips" which are coordinated through the students’ schools. The hikes and adventures for these courses focus on different elements of tropical ecology to study particular flora, fauna, micro-ecosystems, and symbiotic relationships, growth and life cycles, survival adaptations, etc. A couple of evening talks can be expected and a service project in the local community is required. A trip to at least one other protected area is included. The goal is to have each student gain a more complete understanding of the fragility of the tropical rainforest and of the need to protect it.
Students (or their parents) reading this who are interested in a course of this nature should also contact their school biology teacher to begin coordination efforts as early as possible.
University groups interested in tropical ecology courses in the Campanario Biological Reserve or throughout Costa Rica should contact the San José office for planning.
Understand all facets of a biological reserve.
TROPICAL ECOLOGY TEACHERS' PROGRAMS Are designed to give hands-on experience to the active instructor who wants personal knowledge of the tropics to complement the area in which he or she teaches. This rigorous program, which runs two weeks, includes most course materials, requires a small amount of pre-program reading, and assumes a basic understanding of biology on the part of the participant.
The program spends one week on site at the Proyecto Campanario facilities in the rainforest and another week traveling to different areas of Costa Rica for experience in other life zones. It is hoped that you, as a teacher, will take back to your students the understanding of the urgency to work together to conserve what is left of the tropical eco-systems.
For course description, itinerary, and application click here.
TYPICAL SCHEDULE FOR 6-DAY / 5-NIGHT STAY.
Day 1: You travel to Sierpe by plane, personal vehicle, public bus, or other means of your choice where the Campanario boat meets you for your trip down river, through the mangrove forest, and down the coast to Campanario. After a brief orientation talk at the field station and perhaps a short hike, you explore the beach, swim, or relax in a hammock.
Day 2: At sunrise you're off on a birding walk before breakfast followed by a long hike into the Campanario Reserve to continue your wildlife observations. The afternoon can find you playing in the surf or just relaxing.
Day 3: You join the naturalist for a walk through Campanario's primary forest and then on to neighboring impacted areas to learn a bit about the social pressures affecting tropical regions. You finish the day snorkeling, fishing, or just enjoying the sunset.
Day 4: Early morning finds you on a wildlife observation walk. Mid-morning you take off with a picnic lunch for Isla del Caño, perhaps seeing dolphins or whales on the boat trip over. On the Island, you climb to the indigenous burial grounds and awe at the profusion of epiphytic life in the forest there. After snorkeling, you return to the Campanario home base in time for another sunset.
Day 5: Corcovado National Park awaits you. You hike as long as you like, eat your lunch by a stream or waterfall, and return to share stories with your new friends at Campanario.
Day 6: You have another opportunity for a wildlife observation walk at dawn. The boat takes you back to Sierpe for your return to San José or elsewhere. You take with you fond memories, enviable experiences, and best wishes from all of us.
See you again next year.
SOCIACION PROYECTO CAMPANARIO
A non-profit sister organization, the Asociación Proyecto Campanario (APC), was established in 1991 to principally involve the local, national, and international communities in conservation efforts in the northern Osa Peninsula. Through the APC, Proyecto Campanario cooperates with schools, local government, and environmental and tourism groups in the region through outreach and environmental education programs. The APC is currently working in three areas:
Environmental Education Programs
Rainforest Conservation Camps are offered for the local Costa Rican students and teachers to get them out to see what remains of the rainforest in their own country. Traveling to remote areas like the Campanario Biological Reserve is financially quite limiting for many Costa Rican families. Subsidies from the APC can bring the cost to the participant down to within reach of most families. In some cases, coordination is made with visiting international students through exchange programs so that the Costa Rican host/hostess participates alongside his international "brother" or "sister", and they study and work in the rainforest together.
Trail Network Promotion
Join us in Forest Conservation.The Osa Peninsula, fortunately, still has large areas of forest left, but only some of which is in hands of landowners dedicated to conservation. The pressure of logging, road building, and conversion to pasture land are real and ever-present. The APC is working on a campaign to build a trail network through these forested lands to encourage landowners to keep their forest and to provide rustic lodging or other low impact accommodations for tourists hiking the network.
Rainforest Land Acquisition The APC is actively engaged in fund raising to acquire additional lands, those still with natural forest cover and those in danger of encroachment, in order to place them in a "reserve" status. With the help of grants and donations from international foundations, school groups, and concerned private citizens world wide, the protected area of the Osa Peninsula can continue to increase.
There are several abandoned tracts of land in the area, most of which are still in rainforest, which are either under considerable pressure to be "developed" and/or are simply for sale by the owner wanting to leave the area. In both cases there is no secure future for the forest that remains. The APC is working to acquire the funds to purchase these lands. This means raising funds for not only the actual land purchase price, but also an amount to place in a trust fund for the continual protection of the area.
Contact us on how you can help.
"RED COSTARRICENSE DE RESERVAS NATURALES"
Proyecto Campanario is an active member and sits on the board of directors of the Costa Rican Network of Natural Reserves. This network of private reserves encourages private sector land owners to maintain as a reserve whatever lands they own and manage which are in an unaltered and natural state. It is hoped that by forming an extensive network of biological corridors between one small reserve and the next throughout the country the "Network" will have substantially added to Costa Rica’s already famed system of parks and reserves. To date there are over 110 members which total more than 5% of the total area of Costa Rica. The "Network" also serves as an advocacy group for its members.
National and International Conferences & Seminars:
Proyecto Campanario has made a continuing effort to participate and be represented in national and international conferences and seminars and to keep up-to-date with the latest information. We have been fortunate to be part of many events, be they just a meeting of a few hours or a full week of workshops and classes. We will continue to participate in future events and represent the conservation efforts in the Osa Peninsula.
Cooperating Organizations and Sponsors
Proyecto Campanario also works with and is sponsored by individuals and organizations in different occupations, but of like minds. Here is a bit about each of them:
Participate actively in volunteer services.COTERC Proyecto Campanario works closely with the Canadian Organization for Tropical Education and Rainforest Conservation to encourage research of the tropical lowlands of Costa Rica. COTERC also maintains a field station for this purpose in the canals area near the town of Tortuguero in northeast Costa Rica. Their Website is: http://www.coterc.org
Pacific Blue Traders Pacific Blue Traders offers the unusual and unique home and garden decorating element from around the Pacific rim. As a business and as individuals, Pacific Blue Traders are committed to promoting environmental ethics and support Proyecto Campanario through their sales. www.pacificblue.net
Caldera Kayaks Caldera Kayaks offers low impact kayak touring of the lakes and rivers of California with occasional trips south to Central America and the Osa Peninsula. Contact them for tour availability.
RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Add a tour of the mangroves to your expeditions downriver.We make every effort to offer you as complete an experience as possible and are proud to be able to provide a variety of short walks, long hikes, or all-day expeditions to nearby locations to experience the beauty and diversity of tropical eco-systems.
Trips can include the Campanario Biological Reserve itself, Corcovado National Park, deforested and impacted areas, local communities, and/or the Sierpe-Terraba Mangrove Reserve. Right off our shore, you can enjoy swimming, snorkeling, and fishing.
We will also be happy to make arrangements so you can enjoy a variety of specialty activities:
* scuba diving * horseback riding * kayaking through the mangrove reserve * tour to Isla de Caño biological reserve
Don’t forget the simple daily pleasures of swimming, building sand castles, bird watching, relaxing in a hammock, and watching beautiful sunsets.
TRIP PACKAGES The four basic programs, which are described on the Environmental Education page, are:
• Ecological Tourism Expeditions for the individual or family group • Rain Forest Conservation Camps for families and/or middle and high school student groups • Tropical Ecology Courses for university, high school and middle school students. • Tropical Ecology Teachers Program
Your visit can be anywhere from 4-days/3-nights to several weeks, if you so desire. See the chart below for trip packages and rates.
All trip packages listed in the chart below include:
• Boat transportation from Sierpe to Campanario and return. • Lodging and all meals during your stay at Campanario. • Access to the Campanario reserve and its installations. • Hikes with a naturalist guide for environmental interpretation. • Day trip to Corcovado National Park. • Entrance fee to national park. Click on a link below for more stories on PCOL
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