page_title: Costa Rica
section_title: Flora and fauna
hierarchical_section_title: Costa Rica / Geography / Flora and fauna
caption_attribution_description: English: Doris Heliconius doris Linnaeus butterfly. Characteristics are two white spots on fore-wing, scalloped margin of hind wing, marginal row of small, white spots along the hind wing. The fan with fingers is orange here but can also be blue or green. Photograph taken in the Costa Rican Glasshouse at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens by Joy Schoenberger in 2007.
context_page_description: Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, and Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around 5 million in a land area of 51,060 square kilometers. An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José, with around 2 million people in the surrounding metropolitan area.
  The sovereign state is a unitary presidential constitutional republic. It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agriculture, has diversified to include sectors such as finance, corporate services for foreign companies, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism. Many foreign manufacturing and services companies operate in Costa Rica's Free Trade Zones where they benefit from investment and tax incentives.
context_section_description: There is a rich variety of plants and Costa Rican wildlife.
  One national park, the Corcovado National Park, is internationally renowned among ecologists for its biodiversity (including big cats and tapirs) and is where visitors can expect to see an abundance of wildlife. Corcovado is the one park in Costa Rica where all four Costa Rican monkey species can be found. These include the white-headed capuchin, the mantled howler, the endangered Geoffroy's spider monkey, and the Central American squirrel monkey, found only on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and a small part of Panama, and considered endangered until 2008, when its status was upgraded to vulnerable. Deforestation, illegal pet-trading, and hunting are the main reasons for its threatened status. Costa Rica is the first tropical country to have stopped and reversed deforestation; it has successfully restored its forestry and developed an ecosystem service to teach biologists and ecologists about its environmental protection measures.
caption: Heliconius doris Linnaeus butterfly of Costa Rica
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