In 1990, John and Karen Lewis walked away from their old life in Minnesota to buy a stretch of virgin rainforest on Costa Rica's remote Osa Peninsula. What began as a two-week birdwatching trip became a decision that shaped the rest of their working lives. The couple sold nearly everything they owned to fund the purchase of roughly 1,000 acres of old-growth forest on the peninsula's southern tip, a spot so isolated that government officials warned almost nobody would ever visit it. That warning turned out to be wrong, and the land they saved is now a conservation success story.
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