Enrique Joseph has had a good life. For starters, he grew up on a cocoa farm in a near-idyllic place: a tropical forest-covered region of southern Costa Rica known as Talamanca. "Back then there was no electricity or roads, only a railroad," says thirty-eight-year-old Joseph. "As kids, we used to take the horses before the farmers woke up and go riding in the jungle." Since his early years, Talamanca has remained largely protected. Within its 1,300 square miles lie two national parks, a wildlife refuge, and a World Heritage Site -- all of which contribute to Talamanca's eco-tourism industry. Today, Joseph owns a small open-air restaurant called Caribbean Flavor and guides tours to Cahuita National Park, home to green turtles, sharks, and 123 species of fish.

So Joseph was not happy when he found out in 2000 that Costa Rica's government was allowing Harken Energy, a Houston, Texas-based oil company, and its partner, Louisiana's MKJ-Xplorations, to look for oil off the Talamanca coast. Harken's seismic explosions nearly ruined a local lobster fishery, and Joseph decided to join the fight.

On one side was Harken, a multi-national with strong political ties to President George W. Bush (who sat on its board of directors in the late 1980s). On the other side were some forty Costa Rican citizen groups who called themselves Acción de Lucha Anti-Petrola (ADELA). With almost no money, this citizens' movement staged protests in San José, went on the radio, and even brought lawsuits in the national court. Most of the country was behind them. But no one in the United States was listening. That's when ADELA got in touch with NRDC.

In January 2001, Jacob Scherr, director of NRDC's International Program, flew to Talamanca. NRDC had recently launched a campaign to save BioGems -- threatened wild places in the Americas that need urgent protection. Scherr and Ari Hershowitz, head of BioGems work in Latin America, met with ADELA, gave them campaign advice, and immediately named Talamanca to the BioGems list. They also put a call to action on the BioGems website -- a move that gave ADELA's fight international exposure to thousands of people who had signed up online to be BioGems Defenders. Over the next few months, Harken and Costa Rica's government received more than 27,000 emails, faxes, and letters of protest. "This was probably one of the largest deluges of mail they'd ever seen," Scherr says.

In February 2002, a government panel under Costa Rica's newly elected president, Abel Pacheco, a man with strong environmental values, rejected Harken's bid to drill for oil. For Scherr, the victory was a classic example of what the BioGems program does best: "When you have the strength of thousands of members behind you, people listen." For Enrique Joseph, the victory gave the people of Talamanca confidence to protect their environment. "If we don't fight for what we believe in and look closely at what our government does," he says, "then you can be sure there will be some monkey business going on."
-- Sam Martin