Canopy Family | New York Times: In Panama, Nobody Here but 289 Birds

New York Times, Travel Section (excerpts) By Mary Tannen April 21, 2002 I NEVER thought I'd come face to face with an ocellated antbird. In fact, until the day before, I hadn't even known there was such a thing. But here it was, with its mate, scratching around in the leaves just a few feet away. It was about bluebird size, with a ring of blue around its eye and an intricate pattern of spots on its brown back and breast. A genuine rara avis! I had come upon it while walking along a paved road cut into the side of the hill that put me at eye level with the forest floor. Obviously not your average road. It was the private drive leading up to Canopy Tower lodge, a converted radar tower rising out of the rain forest of the 50,000-acre Soberanía National Park in Panama, and a mecca for bird enthusiasts. As far as birders go, I'm of the casual variety, but I had joined a tropical bird workshop organized in January by Wendy Paulson, a naturalist who leads bird walks in Central Park for the Nature Conservancy. Also with us was Ken Rosenberg, director of the conservation program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and eight amateur birders of various levels of proficiency. Then there was my husband, Mike, who isn't a birder, and had been concerned that a four-day stay at the lodge would be "too birdy," but who had come after some arm twisting. While I was encountering my antbirds (and two spectacular tanagers), Mike was happily prowling the old section of Panama City with the owner and manager of Canopy Tower, Raúl Arias de Para, an entrepreneur, a conservationist and, like Mike, a history buff... One morning before dawn we hopped aboard a comfortable bus

Black Hawk-Eagle by Michael Castro One of the great pleasures of anyone who has an appreciation for the natural world is watching an animal return back to its natural habitat.  A sense of freedom and reunion with its community are instilled in both the animal and those involved in the release.  From that point on, the animal must prove its skills to find food, shelter, a mate and use its instincts and learned behaviors to survive. At the end of June, an adult Black Hawk-Eagle was confiscated by ANAM (Panama’s Ministry of the Environment) in Bocas Del Toro province of western Panama.  Although in good condition, the eagle was brought to Summit Municipal Park near Gamboa to be monitored and to ensure it would be in a good state to be released into the forests of Soberanía National Park in central Panama. By the end of August, the eagle was proving to show its strength and ability to catch and kill prey with its strong feet and sharp talons.  Nestor Correa, director of Summit Municipal Park, and Ron Magill, visiting from Zoo Miami, decided it was time for this bird to be released.  On the morning of Saturday, August 31, the bird was brought to the Canopy Tower to be released at canopy level from the Observation Deck, directly into the lowland forest of Soberanía National Park. Black Hawk-Eagle being released from the Canopy Tower, photo by Carlos Bethancourt It was a beautiful morning, with blue sky and no rain or storm in sight.  Just after 9:00 a.m., the release team made their way with a large kennel containing the eagle up to the top of the Canopy Tower.  Canopy Tower staff, including guides Carlos Bethancourt and Michael Castro, were present for the release.  The kennel was positioned on the

"Choco" the Harpy Eagle, a new arrival at Summit Park A special visit to see Panama’s national bird, the majestic Harpy Eagle It’s not every day an opportunity arises to meet a Harpy Eagle.  One of the world’s most majestic raptors, this species has long been an iconic symbol of rainforest and tropical environments and conservation.  As habitat destruction continues throughout tropical regions, the urgency to protect such keystone species continues in the hearts and actions of conservationists worldwide.  For a birder, the opportunity to see a Harpy Eagle is an unforgettable experience. On June 30, Canopy Tower guide Carlos Bethancourt and the Cheepers! Birding on a Budget group found a young sloth on Semaphore Hill Road below the Canopy Tower.  Carlos took the sloth to Summit Municipal Park for care.   While there, he learned that Summit Park had recently received a rescued Black Hawk-Eagle (Spizaetus tyrannus) from Bocas del Toro in western Panama and a young Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) from the Darién—both in the past few days.  Nestor Correa, the director of Summit Park, met with Carlos and invited the group to visit a little later in the week to see the new eagle. On July 4, Carlos, Cindy and Jim Beckman, owners of Cheepers!, Kim Kaufman and 10 birders from the U.S. who were staying at the Canopy Tower for the week visited Summit Park for the meet-and-greet with the young Harpy Eagle. Upon arriving at the park, the group was thrilled to meet two baby Hoffman’s Two-toed Sloths, who were found in the area and dropped off at the park.  Under constant care by Nestor’s wife, these young sloths (only 2 and 3 months old) will hopefully grow strong and healthy and can return back to their natural habitat. Baby Two-toed Sloth Nestor gave us an

By SUSAN HOLMES and BESSY REYNA The Hartford Courant August 18, 2002 Choosing to travel to the beautiful small country of Panama is easy, but selecting where you will stay and what you'll do once on vacation there is another matter. Panama is a 30,000-square-mile strip of land, like a long arm uniting Central and South America. It has a wonderfully rich diversity of natural and man-made wonders. There are the crystal-clear waters and gorgeous sandy beaches on the islands and shores of two oceans; a tropical rain forest populated with more than 700 varieties of birds, 16 species of butterflies and myriad fascinating creatures prowling the flora and fauna; and mountains with breathtaking vistas. Panama City is a vibrant cosmopolitan city, with hundreds of restaurants featuring world cuisine and a great nightlife with casinos and discos. Panama's stunning skyscrapers keep watch over the bay that is the entryway into that most spectacular engineering wonder, the Panama Canal. One of us is an avid birdwatcher and the other a devoted beach-lover, and we both wanted this vacation to help us wind down from hectic work lives. After consulting the Lonely Planet Guide to Panama and a multitude of Internet sites, we chose to split our nearly two weeks between ecotourism in the rain forest and pampering at a beach resort. Continental Airlines' daily nonstop flight from Newark to Panama City's Tocumen airport arrives late in the evening, so the first night was spent in one of the many reasonably priced hotels in the city. Early next morning we started our ascent to Canopy Tower, an ecolodge and nature observatory, which was our haven in the rain forest for four days and nights. The drive to the lodge takes about an hour on a road that cuts across the country from

Sanjida O'Connell takes in the sights and sounds of the rain forest at a former US radio tower turned eco-lodge. Saturday March 29, 2003 The Guardian I staggered upstairs at seven in the morning, a good hour late and wondering why I was up so early when we were supposed to be on holiday. A very excited man pushed me in front of a telescope and there, in perfect sharp detail, was my very first blue coatinger, a rare Central American bird, with electric blue plumage. The view itself was breathtaking, rainforest as far as the eye could see, the rising sun running like a slow fuse along the length of the Panama Canal, the day's first boat sailing smoothly through the trees. We were staying in the appropriately named Canopy Tower, once a US-owned radar tower, just outside Panama City, now converted into a luxury eco-lodge. I was standing on the observation deck, a wide balcony running around the tower's 9m high geotangent dome (a variation of Bucky Fuller's famous geodesic dome), and was level with the top of the trees. Barely metres away from us was a troop of black howler monkeys. The male was greeting the day, his deafening calls a cross between a tiger in pain and the sea trapped in a cave. The females ignored him; clinging to the very tips of one of the tallest trees was a tiny baby moving about in a wobbly fashion. The females watched his every move, hands outstretched to catch him in case he fell, every so often making vain attempts to bring him down; there was a synchronous series of gasps and winces from the primates on the observation deck. Canopy Tower, in the heart of Soberania national park, is simply one of the best places in

By Joy Rothke Special to The Tico Times Weekly Edition: Vol. VIII, No. 71 - San José, Costa Rica, June 20 - June 26, 2003 Glowing adjectives are bandied about with abandon when it comes to hotels and resorts. Every place, the PR mavens insist, is unique, incomparable - one-of-a-kind!! The truth is most places fail the definition of unique. The Canopy Tower in Gamboa, Panama is unique. This former military radar station, a remnant of the U.S.' long presence in the former Canal Zone, has been transformed by its visionary owner, Raul Arias de Para, a banker-turned-conservationist, into a premier destination for birders and nature lovers from around the world. Its location, smack in the middle of 50,000+ acre Soberania National Park, and high above the tree canopy, offers guests an unparalleled view of the avifauna of Panama, as well as panoramic views of the canal. Topped by a 30-foot geotangent dome (a variation on the geodesic dome) the Canopy Tower was a hulking, drab, windowless, all-steel structure. On the surface, it appeared an unlikely home for rebirth as a hotel. With a single toilet, it had been home to a series of U.S. Air Force radar technicians, who used the tower to monitor suspected drug smugglers. The tower was closed in 1995, part of the turnover of the canal to the Panamanians. In 1996, the U.S.-educated Arias, scion of an influential Panamanian political family (he is the grandson of Don Tomás Arias, one of the founders of the Republic of Panama) got permission to turn it into an eco-lodge, after a year of complex negotiations. A century of U.S. presence protected Soberania from deforestation and development. In addition to the abundant bird life, jaguars; sloths; marmosets; howler, white-faced, capuchin and night monkeys; kinkajou; ocelots; jaguarundi; nine-banded armadillo and

From Alaska to the Australian outback, these innovative retreats are committed to conservation—with the added value of cultural sensitivity, isolation, and, of course, style. Being green has never been so appealing. From July, 2003 by David Hochman So much depends upon a red poison dart frog. We have been in Panama only a few days, but already we're wise to the promise and peril a little jungle bling can bring. It's no secret that the country longs to tap its abundant natural resources to compete with neighboring Costa Rica on the toucan tour circuit, but Panama's campaign to become the next eco-Eden still feels a little unpolished. On our first night, my wife, Ruth, and I find true conservation visionaries, like Raúl Arias de Para, the gracious banker turned bird-watcher, whose radical Canopy Tower guesthouse (see No. 10), which sits above the Canal near Panama City, is a converted U.S. Air Force radar station. And yet a few nights later, at Gamboa Rainforest Resort, a $28 million hotel selling itself as the ultimate luxe bio-reserve, we're issued green wristbands (a tag-and-release program, if you will) that let us indulge in Jungle Burgers ("broiled for the predator") from the 24-hour room-service menu in our air-conditioned suite. While watching HBO. If we want nature, I'm sure the guest-relations manager will have a bellman whisk it to our room. For several years, I've been researching a book on the world's most inventive earth-friendly getaways, and I keep running into the same sticky mix. One hotel's idea of ecotourism is another's ploy to cash in on conscience. Some eco-sensitive retreats ask guests to reuse towels and insist they've saved the world. Others can't seem to do enough to serve the three-tiered mission of responsible tourism: positive impact on the environment, on the local culture,

Smithsonian Magazine, March 2004 (excerpts) As Panama seeks to diversify and improve its economy, it is looking to use the resources of its rain forests and parks and develop eco-tourism. I got a glimpse of its potential one morning at a hotel called the Canopy Tower, about 20 miles outside of Panama City in a national park called Soberanía (Sovereignty). The structure is a corrugated metal cylinder 50 feet high, painted aqua, with a yellow fiberglass sphere that looks a little like a soccer ball perched atop it. It began life as an American military radar station, on a ridge called Semaphore Hill. In the last years of the American military presence, it tracked drug runners' planes coming from Colombia. When the Americans left, a Panamanian businessman and birding enthusiast named Raúl Arias de Para acquired the rights to manage the property and set about beating the American sword into a plowshare. He installed a dozen wedge-shaped bedrooms inside the cylinder. On the top level, he built a casually elegant lounge and dining area encircled by windows. Atop that, wedged under the yellow soccer ball, he built an observation deck with a 360-degree view of the surrounding rain forest and, in the distance, the canal. The beauty of this is that it allows guests to see the birds face to face. Near dawn on the day I visited, I climbed through a hatch to the observation deck to watch and listen as the forest awakened. A staff member provided fresh coffee. Howler monkeys bellowed somewhere to the north. Mist floated over the forested hilltops of the Continental Divide. The sun came up from the general direction of the Pacific. (Because of the way the isthmus lies, the Pacific end of the canal is southeast of the Atlantic end.) Using binoculars