The park is holding. The budget protecting it is not.
Illegal mining, poaching, and trafficking routes have all been documented in and around Corcovado National Park in recent years, while SINAC, the agency that funds every national park in Costa Rica including this one, has had its operating budget cut for four consecutive years. This is what's publicly documented, and why the people who choose to visit are becoming part of how the gap gets closed.
Costa Rica built the model. The budget behind it didn't keep up.
Costa Rica remains the reference point for conservation done right, with close to a quarter of its land under formal protection and a certification framework other countries still look to as a model. None of that is in question here. What's changed is what's operating around it: small-scale panners, known locally as coligalleros, have in places given way to organized camps running power tools and satellite phones, financed at a scale artisanal mining never reached, arriving just as international gold prices near record highs make the payoff bigger than it's ever been.
That's not a story about Costa Rica failing. It's a story about an agency being asked to do more, with less, while the pressure on the ground it protects hasn't gone down to match.
These aren't three separate problems. On the ground, they're increasingly one.
What follows isn't speculation stitched together for effect. Each card below traces to a specific, dated source, from a 2025 coast guard interdiction to arrest records inside the park itself.
A Coastline Under Pressure
Costa Rica remains a major point along international smuggling routes moving toward the U.S. and Europe. A documented 2025 coast guard interdiction near Puerto Jiménez shows how close these routes can run to the coastline, a reflection of pressure on national enforcement rather than a description of everyday conditions inside the park.
National seizure volume, 2025 (+70% vs. 2024)Camps, Not Panners
What were once small-scale panning operations inside the park have evolved into organized camps with power tools, metal detectors, and satellite phones, increasingly financed with illicit proceeds, according to rangers on the ground.
70% of arrested miners in Corcovado had prior arrest warrantsThe Longest-Running Pressure
Hunting pressure on white-lipped peccary, paca, and great curassow remains the longest-running conservation challenge in the Osa, the backdrop against which newer pressures have emerged in the same remote terrain.
Cited in a 2017 Costa Rican Supreme Court order for stronger park protectionWhat's protecting the park is shrinking. What's happening around it isn't.
SINAC's institutional budget, down 42% cumulatively between 2020 and 2024. A separately reported 40% single-year cut followed in 2025, a different measurement window, same downward direction.
Source: independent annual national performance report, cited by InSight Crime & The Tico Times, not independently reviewed by usCoast guard interdictions along this stretch of coastline rose alongside this number, the kind of activity park rangers increasingly find themselves adjacent to, without the resources to handle it alone.
Source: national interdiction data, 2025These aren't figures on the same ledger. One tracks a park service's operating budget, the other tracks a national trend. But they're both real, both current, and they explain why the basics matter so much right now.
Rainy season is when the Osa is hardest to protect, and hardest to watch.
No roads in
Corcovado's interior has no roads. Rangers reach remote camps entirely on foot, through terrain that gets harder to move during the rainy season, roughly May–November.
One radio line
Raid teams have coordinated over a single line back to base, with no independent field communication system for active operations.
Satellite-equipped lookouts
Camps documented in the park are built for multi-day stays, with lookout networks and satellite phones giving operators a warning system rangers often don't have.
Fewer visitors during the rainy months could plausibly mean fewer eyes on the trails at exactly the time enforcement access is hardest, though no agency currently publishes rainy-season-specific enforcement data to confirm the size of that gap.
Nature has no borders. Neither does the responsibility to protect it.
Government rangers are still the ones making the treks into these camps. What's increasingly missing is everything around that effort. That means the food, equipment, and working radios that turn a willing team into an effective one.
That's the gap conservation NGOs and the travelers who support them are stepping into, alongside SINAC, not instead of it. Every visit to the Osa Peninsula is a chance to be part of that support directly, and choosing to spend your time here, informed about what that choice actually funds, is one of the most direct and durable ways to stand behind the people already doing this work.
Your stay already funds part of this work. See exactly what it buys.
SOURCES
- Asmann, P. (2026). "Cocaine and Gold: The Battle to Protect Costa Rica's Corcovado National Park." InSight Crime, published 15 April 2026, updated 5 May 2026. insightcrime.org
- SINAC's institutional budget figures come from an independent annual national performance report, known to us only through InSight Crime and The Tico Times' reporting on it. We have not independently reviewed the primary report.
- Ranger patrol-hour data via Dialogue Earth / SINAC reporting, 2020–2021.
- The Tico Times (2026). "Costa Rica's Crucitas Gold Crisis Deepens as Illegal Mining Spreads." ticotimes.net
- Plotkin, M.J. (2024, updated 2026). "Miners, drug traffickers and loggers: Is Costa Rica's Corcovado National Park on the verge of collapse?" Mongabay. news.mongabay.com