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Monte Verde, Costa Rica, has recently become a popular tourist destination among North American, European, and Costa Rican ecotourists desiring to experience rain and cloud forests. The resplendent quetzal, a migratory bird with colorful plumage and mythical connotations, figures as a central icon and spectacle in Monte Verde's cultural economy of tourism. This article explores how the practices of producing and consuming quetzals are embedded in and reflect contested interpretations of forest landscapes, authentic experiences, and environmental histories and futures. As spectacles around which touristic experiences are often organized, quetzals are invested with nostalgia and hopes for the future. By focusing on the various social contexts in which quetzals are produced, viewed, and explained, this article examines some of the processes by which transnational and local discursive and capitalistic formations, increasingly organized under the banner of ecotourism, claim the authority to fix the meanings, histories, and futures of Monte Verde landscapes and nature more generally. (Ecotourism, Costa Rica, environmental activism, tourist spectacles) Several weeks after he began a new job as a maintenance worker at a small cloud-forest preserve in the Tilaran highlands of Costa Rica, Manuel Azofeifa (a pseudonym) invited me to walk with him through the forest. Located in the Monte Verde region, one of Costa Rica's most renowned sites of nature conservation and ecotourism since the 1970s, the Reserva Santa Elena where we took our walk was a relatively new reserve, opening in the early 1990s. Manuel explained that as a career cattle rancher he had paid relatively little attention to the establishment and expansion of forest preserves and the growing numbers of foreign tourists visiting this remote mountainous region in which he and his family have lived and farmed for 50 years(2) He decided to work at this preserve not so much because he wanted a change of career or to participate in the tourism economy, but out of a desire to support his son's high school, which had acquired the cloud-forest preserve in 1995 to fund its daily operations. We carried machetes and our lunch, as is typical on long walks like this, but Manuel viewed this walk differently from others he had taken, and not simply because he had not been in this forest since it was formally protected in the late 1970s, or because he now worked here as an employee. The shift in Manuel's approach to this walk was reflected in the camera he carried, a small point-and-shoot that he rarely used except for special occasions like parties or family trips. This was the first time he had taken a camera with him into a forest. Manuel explained that he brought his camera because he wanted to take a picture of a waterfall he had heard was in a remote section of the forest to show his wife and daughters, since they would never come this far into the forest. When we found the waterfall he posed for a picture in front of it, donning my cowboy-style hat, for he said he wanted to look like he was on an aventura (adventure). Walking away, Manuel talked excitedly about waterfalls, saying that they are particularly what Costa Ricans enjoy when they visit forest preserves. Then, on hearing the call of a resplendent quetzal, he hurried ahead to see it. When I caught up to him, he was pointing his camera up a tree at the quetzal and making noises to get its attention. He snapped a photograph, turned to me, and announced, "You know, five years ago, I might have shot at this bird with a gun, probably just for the hell of it. But, you see, now I shoot it with my camera. " ECOTOURISM AND THE CONTESTED GROUNDS OF NATURE A characteristic act of tourism is to insist on difference and mark it by various techniques of observation, including photography (Taylor 1994:15). That Manuel judged the waterfall and the quetzal as different enough to mark with photographs suggests that for him these sights stand outside his ordinary, workaday experience (Cohen 1974; Graburn 1989; Urry 1990:3). …

The diet and feeding habits of the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus m. mocinno) were studied in the cloud forest of the "El Triunfo" Biosphere Reserve, Chiapas, Mexico. Adults fed on fruits of 15 plant species, six of which (40%) are members of the family Lauraceae; 63 percent of the fruit items consumed were from these species. Other fruit items consumed were from species belong to the families Theaceae (8.3%) and, with 4.2 percent each: Myrsinaceae, Araliaceae, Verbenaceae, Solanaceae, Myrtaceae, Melasomataceae, Moraceae and Clusiaceae. Quetzals took fruits on the wing from distal branches of trees. Feeding activity was highest in the late afternoon hours. Average sex ratio in feeding groups was 1:1. The diet of chicks consisted of fruits (24%) and insects and small vertebrates (76%) during their first 10 d, and 72 percent fruits and 28 percent animal food from then until fledging. Large fruits increased and soft bodied animals decreased significantly in the chick's diet between these two periods. Of the plant species fed to the chick 37.5 percent belonged to the family Lauraceae. Of the total fruit items, 50 percent belonged to this family, in contrast to higher proportions reported for 1? m. costaricensis. In the overall chick's diet, Lauraceous fruit made up 19 percent, close to that reported for 1? m. costaricensis. Other bird species that took fruit from the same trees as the quetzals fed from the inner branches while perching and fed mainly on non-lauraceous fruits, with small seeds. Our results support the view that the quetzal is a specialized frugivore, feeding mainly on fruits of the family Lauraceae. Quetzals may play an important role as seed dispersal agents especially during the non-breeding season, when they move up to 3 km/d, adding up to several dozen km in a season.

Ocotea pharomachrosorum (Lauraceae), of the Ocotea helecterifolia-group from Costa Rica and Panama, is described here. Within the large genus Ocotea Aublet (Lauraceae), this new species belongs to the Ocotea helecterifolia-group. This group contains numerous borderline cases between the genera Ocotea, Nectandra, and Phoebe (Rohwer, 1991; 1992 in litt.). However, its outer tepals are glabrous inside, the inner ones have only a few papillae and the anthers are fleshy and smooth, not papillate, nor hood-shaped; these are all Ocotea-like characters. Although this species was collected for the first time several years ago, the material was insufficient to describe it. This collection was treated by Rohwer (1991) as Ocotea sp. A and by Burger & van der Werff (1991) as "a species of uncertain position." Ocotea pharomachrosorum Gomez-Laurito, sp. nov. TYPE: Costa Rica. San Jose: Dota, San Gerardo, Finca de Efrain Chacon, 10?32'20"N, 83?49'05"W, 2,100-2,200 m, 10 feb. 1992, J. Gomez-Laurito, J. A. Lopez, A. Mora & W. Barillas 12160 (holotype, CR; isotypes, F, MO, K, USJ). Figure 1. A speciebus quas Rohwer ad species e turma helecterifolia ascripsit combinatione indumenti densissimi crispati cum basibus foliorum inaequilateralibus et nervis lateralibus utroque 3-5 distinguenda. Trees 8-12 m tall, 30-40 cm D.B.H., trunk straight, terete; bark grayish with transverse lenticels; inner bark yellowish; wood hard. Leafy branchlets densely grayish tomentulous with curled and matted hairs. Leaves alternate, distant; petioles 2.53.5 cm long; lamina 9-19 cm long, 5-7.5 cm broad, narrowly ovate to ovate-elliptic or ovate-oblong, tapering to a short-acuminate apex, obtuse to rounded at the base, the sides of lamina unequal at the base with the sides 2-6 mm distant on the petiole, drying stiffly chartaceous or subcoriaceous, the upper surface glabrous and lustrous but with hairs above the slightly elevated proximal major veins, tertiary venation slightly elevated, lower surface densely yellowish gray or whitish gray tomentulous, the hairs minute (0.1-0.3 mm) and curved, with 3-5 major secondary veins on each side, the basal secondaries often strongly ascending, central secondaries arising at ngles of 35?-500. Young leaves very dense brownish tomentose. Inflorescences solitary and axillary to distal leaves or undeveloped leaves near the shoot tip, paniculate with short lateral branches subtended by conspicuous (4-7 mm) oblong bracts, peduncle, rachis and bracts densely brownish gray omentulous. Flowers white, delicately scented; 6 te als 4-5 mm long, 3 mm wide, externally pubescent, internally scarcely papillose; 9 fertile stamens, 6 outer, 3 inner, subsessile, thick, fleshy, smooth with hairs at base of filaments; glands sessile, 0.6 mm long. Ovary ovoid, glabrous. Style 1 mm long; stigma capitate. Cup 8-13 mm long, obconic, redtinged. Berry ellipsoid, 3.5 cm long, up to 2 cm wide, green to purple at maturity. This new species and other Lauraceae are an important food source of one of the most beautiful birds in Central America: the resplendent quetzal (Pharomachros mocinno), hence the name. Ocotea pharomachrosorum is easily distinguished by its dense gray tomentum of branchlets and undersides of leaves; unusual long petioles to 3.5 cm long; subcoriaceous leaves with only 3-4 pairs of major veins and sides of the lamina unequal at the base. Moreover, the young leaves and shoots are conspicuously dense brownish tomentose. It is presently known from the Pacific slope of the Cordillera de Talamanca in Costa Rica, and adjacent Chiriqui highlands in Panama, from 1,600 to ca. 2,300 m elevation. Paratypes. Same locality as type: Julio Sdnchez s.n. (CR, USJ). PANAMA. CHIRIQUI. Vic. of Boquete, Finca Collins, El Velo, 12 Mar. 1963 (US) Steam et al. 1985. Acknowledgments. I am grateful to William C. Burger (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, U.S.A.) and Jens G. Rohwer (Institut fur Systematische Botanik und Pflanzengeografie, Heidelberg, Germany) for critical readings of the manuNOVON 3: 31-33. 1993. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.11 on Mon, 17 Oct 2016 05:33:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms