The controversial demolition of two hotels here on account of concerns over their environmental impacts has grabbed national headlines, underscoring growing tension in Costa Rica between the country’s conservation and tourism-development goals. In 1993, Costa Rica’s lead environmental agency ordered the demolition of the Las Palmas and Suerre Hotels in the southeast Caribbean town of Punta Uva, near the Panamanian border. The hotels occupied a portion of Punta Uva that lies inside the Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge. The agency, now called the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Technology (Minaet), asserted that construction of the hotels in 1990 by Czech entrepreneur Jan Kalina had caused deforestation, draining of marshland and coastal pollution in the refuge. But due to legal appeals and the vagaries... [Log in to read more]