We, the students of the newly formed LC at Costa Rica decided to join IFSA because we were sure that it would form a bridge between the forestry student community of the world which will help all of us to have a wider perspective on how to expand the forestry sector in our country. The amount of biological diversity present in our country fills us with responsibility on how to assess the different possible solution for the sustainable development of these resources. Our region with a forest cover of  52.4% has quite the capability to produce different products apart from species richness. But through the years the management strategies being practiced have led to the steady degradation of the forests.

The concept of sustainable management has been completely misunderstood by the people who take care of the forests and have also not been properly guided by their employers and managers. That’s why we thought that through our LC we could spread more awareness and educate people, mainly forestry students by providing  them the information and training that might help them to understand how forestry works in the field and the benefits of expanding it along with laying emphasis on its importance in our country’s context. We think one of the best aspects of this intellectual exchange is that we get to know what technologies are being developed in the world but we realized that cultural exchange is essential, and that is where we were impressed after looking at the work done by IFSA so far.

In the other hand, we discovered IFSA by two sources. The first one was Daniel Guerra who went to IFSS Mexico. So, based on the experience he came up with the idea of creating a local committee in our country, he gathered people who were interested in the project. And the other one was the CLECF 2018, where some members of IFSA went and explained to us what it is about. And so we decided to create a local committee for the students and succeeded in it. 

Even though Costa Rica has been part of ALECIF for many years now and it is the way we’ve been learning from other Latin American countries, all the members of the LC are concerned about the lack of information on how to move forward in our career and the need of joining some bigger organizations. So, we have the vision of improving the our way of forestry but the students need a focal point to learn and experience the new happening in forestry around the world to have a better idea and a clear path to move forward. That is why we formed our local committee and we are looking forward to grow up as a community that can transmit knowledge in an easy and interesting way for everyone.

The author of this article is Estefany Arroyo, the local committee president.

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