Love Tropics is a weekend long charity livestream marathon featuring some of your favorite Mojangstas, Twitch/Mixer streamers, YouTube creators and Minecraft modders. Throughout the weekend, these and other Minecraft personalities will be hosting the event, and you, the donors, will be able to play on a server with them all! There will be donation rewards, giveaways, competitions, and more! Expect lots of fun, laughs, and most important of all, love.
Nestled in one of "Earth's Last Wild Places," Osa Conservation is a non-profit working to protect the biodiversity of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula.
The Osa Peninsula is a "biodiversity hotspot," where jaguars, pumas, and tapirs roam, humpback whales and hammer head sharks come to breed, and thousands of baby sea turtles dot the coastlines. Hundreds of plants and animals live ONLY on the peninsula and nowhere else on Earth.
The Osa Conservation team works alongside community members from mountain ridges to ocean reefs to conserve this richness, with a special focus on mangroves, where the forest meets river and ocean.
In the largest mangrove ecosystem in Costa Rica, Osa Conservation has planted over 85,000 mangrove trees with the help of dozens of local community members.
Osa Conservation’s mission is to conserve the globally significant terrestrial and marine biological diversity of the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica by implementing ecosystem stewardship, enhancing scientific understanding, providing education and training, and creating sustainable economic opportunities.
Osa Conservation’s vision is for Osa’s environment and communities to thrive in perpetuity.
Annual Revenue (2020): $1,885,256 USD
Annual Expenses (2020): $1,345,820 USD
Restoration Expenses (2020): $76,981 USD
For this year's event, we at Love Tropics wanted to bring attention to the climate, biodiversity, and community benefits of mangroves. Mangroves help create some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, and are one of the most effective carbon sinks on the planet as well. Osa Conservation works with locals who are committed to the restoration of the local mangrove population, which was heavily deforested several decades ago.
Wetland ecosystems are some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet, home to innumerable species of plants and wildlife. In addition to supporting a vast array of flora and fauna, wetlands perform several important ecological and geological functions—they purify and filter water sources, control flooding, stabilize shorelines, store carbon, and provide protection from natural disasters.
Osa Conservation is leading a project to restore mangroves in the Térraba-Sierpe National Wetland, a RAMSAR site and one of the largest mangrove ecosystems on the Pacific coast of Central America. The area encompasses over 66,000 acres of land along the Térraba and Sierpe rivers, including the largest intact mangrove system in Costa Rica. This project aims not only to improve habitat for an abundance of terrestrial and marine wildlife but also to improve the livelihoods and sustainability of the local communities that live in this region.
Four decades ago, large areas of the Terraba-Sierpe National Wetlands were deforested to make room for agriculture and the mangroves cut down for timber use. Today, many of the same people who engaged in the deforestation live at a subsistence level from the wetland and recognize the value of managing this ecosystem sustainably. One such community group, APREMAA, make their living through the harvest of an edible bivalve or “piangua” that grows in the mangroves. The members of APREMAA work hand-in-hand with us to test ways to bring back the mangroves.
To read more, check out this post on their blog!
Together with Osa Conservation, Love Tropics aims to raise awareness about the immense value that mangroves provide and raise funds that will enable Osa Conservation to help fund another year of restoration efforts. Together, we can help conserve and restore one of the earth's most precious ecosystems and provide support for its caretakers, current and future.
In September 2017, the category 5 hurricane "Maria" tore through Puerto Rico, leaving the entire island without electricity or running water. Relief efforts were slow and disorganized, leaving most of the island in desperate need for humanitarian aid. The Minecraft community, led by the Love Tropics team, came together in less than a month to organize the first ever Love Tropics event, raising money for the Direct Relief charity to bring water and first aid to the people of Puerto Rico.
A year after Puerto Rico was devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria, much of the island had finally gotten their electricity and water back. The same could not be said for the roofs of their homes. The strong winds had knocked off the roofs off tens of thousands of homes across the island, and not many had the resources to afford a new one, let alone a tarp. For 2018, Love Tropics elected to support Team Rubicon's efforts on the island to help people get new roofs for their homes.
Climate Change is one of humanity's greatest threats in present time. It especially affects those in low-lying, rural areas like the world's tropics, which is why Love Tropics chose to partner with Cool Earth for 2019's event. Together with Cool Earth, Love Tropics helped fight deforestation in Papua New Guinea, which is facing increased deforestation due to poverty and increased pressure from palm plantations in the country. Love Tropics will work with Cool Earth to help these villages become more sustainable and self-sustaining so they don't have to sell off or give up their land when pressured.
Oceans are as important to us as they are vast. They are home to most of the life on our planet and play a central role in the world's natural systems, while feeding hundreds of millions of people every day. Unfortunately, the oceans are in trouble — scientists report that the amount of fish caught from the oceans began declining — for the first time in recorded history — just a few decades ago. Fortunately, we know how to fix things. Science-based fishery management — which establishes science-based catch limits, reduces bycatch and protects habitat — is helping the oceans rebound and recover where it is established. Oceana is dedicated to advocating for science-based fishery management and restoring the world's oceans.
