Ecologist Daniel Janzen wades into the field, clutching a walking stick in one hand and a fist full of towering green blades of grass in the other to steady himself. Winnie Hallwachs, also an ecologist and Janzen's wife, watches him closely, carrying a hat that she hands to him once he stops to explain our whereabouts.

Together with other conservationists who have dedicated decades of their lives to this place, the couple has brought forests back to the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG). It's ​​an astonishing 163,000 hectares of protected landscapes - an area larger than the Hawaiian island of Oahu - where forests have reclaimed farmla …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Doris Ríos ducks gracefully under barbed wire fencing, wearing knee-high black rubber boots, a black dress, and the black horn of a beetle dangling from a beaded necklace. Until recently, this barrier would have kept her out of a ranch operating on Indigenous Cabécar territory. Now, the fencing protects rows of young guava trees that she and other Indigenous women planted on land they took back from the company that once illegitimately occupied it.

The land is healing. Ríos' dark eyes are piercing as she stops to survey the terrain, her jet-black hair falling gently in layers from chin to collarbone. She looks out over a green hillside wher …

Read the full story at The Verge.