Costa Rica won an Earthshot Prize for protecting nature. Yet every year, thousands of its most iconic animals—sloths, monkeys, kinkajous, foxes—die touching uninsulated power lines strung across the country like invisible tripwires.
Between June 2022 and June 2023 alone, 6,262 wildlife electrocutions were reported. That's not a rare tragedy. That's a pattern.
The problem is straightforward: as forests shrink and urbanization pushes deeper into wild areas, animals have nowhere to go but across human infrastructure. When they touch the bare, conductive wires—treating them like tree branches in a landscape of concrete and roads—they're electrocuted. It's become one of the leading causes of wildlife death in the country.
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxFor years, this happened quietly. Then in January 2024, Costa Rica's Ministry of Environment and Energy issued a formal decree requiring utilities to insulate high-risk power lines, reroute cables away from wildlife corridors, and install animal-safe crossings. It sounded like a turning point.
But more than a year later, animal rescue centers across the country say almost nothing has changed on the ground. The decree exists. The rules are clear. The implementation is nearly invisible.
That frustration sparked something. Nineteen rescue organizations formed a coalition called "Esto No Es Pura Vida"—"This Is Not Pura Vida"—a pointed reference to Costa Rica's national identity as a place of harmony and natural abundance. They launched a nationwide petition, collected over 16,500 signatures, and filed legal suits against the state electricity company and the national power utility for inaction.
The activists aren't asking for new ideas. They're asking for enforcement of rules that already exist. Environmental lawyers have taken the utilities to court. Congresswoman Cynthia Córdoba has drafted a stronger "Law for Responsible Electrification" to close gaps in the current framework and give enforcement teeth.
What makes this moment different is visibility. The crisis hasn't changed—the animals are still dying at the same rate. But now the failure to act is being named, tracked, and challenged in public. Costa Rica built its international reputation on conservation. That reputation is now pressure.
The next phase is straightforward: utilities either retrofit their infrastructure or face legal consequences and public scrutiny. It's not revolutionary. It's just overdue.
