The Quira Nursery in Rancho Quemado
Once natural landscapes are touched by the human hand driving urbanization, we often drift towards the tendency to extract plant life and replace it with non-native garden ornamentals and young sapling tree species that often don’t necessarily belong there, are non-native, not beneficial to wildlife, or worse, invasive. We see this in much of the world including the richly biodiverse Osa Peninsula.
Because reforesting degraded lands and providing bird friendly contiguous landscapes is such a significant part of Osa Birds mission, we embarked on a journey with the Biological Monitoring Group made up of people who have been part of our biological monitoring initiative since 2015, and the community of Rancho Quemado to establish the creation of a native plants nursery – the Quira Nursery (Vivero Quira).
The nursery was built in late 2018 with initial funding that Osa Birds received from the Primer Canje de Deuda por Naturaleza (Debt for Nature Swap) and private donations. Here you will find native plants for birds and insects as well as endangered hardwood trees such as Caoba (mahogany), Cedro (ceder), sandalo, manú negro, Ajo, Ceiba (Kapok tree), purple heart amongst many others. We have watched the Quira Nursery grow over the years, more than doubling in size in terms of physical structures, plant inventory and workers dedicating full time paid hours to the nursery. As of July 2023, there are 5 full time workers and over 30 community members who have contributed to the nursery in various ways from construction to maintenance.
The Quira Nursery is arguably the most sought-after nursery for native plants and trees, having received over 200 customers from all over the peninsula and beyond! Osa Birds is now one of their customers! We are purchasing thousands of seeds and plants for our reforestation network that aims to reforest and restore degraded lands, birdscape for bird friendly gardens and beautify the local communities that we work in. We will continue to work with the Quira Nursery on future land restoration projects as we scale up.
Please note that we are working to put up a Facebook page for the Quira Nursery (Vivero Quira) in the upcoming months for more information, plants, sales, contact information and getting there and away. In the meantime please contact info@osabirds.org.
