In 1997, ecologists Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs approached an orange juice company in Costa Rica called Del Oro with an off-the-wall idea. In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, a nature preserve in the country’s northwest, the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

One year later, one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The project was forced to end after just its second year, though, when rival juice manufacturer TicoFruit sued Del Oro, alleging it had defiled a national park, and Costa Rica’s Supreme Court ultimately sided with the plaintiff. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade.

Finding the site years later on

Sixteen years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot, and failed.

“It’s a huge sign, bright yellow lettering. We should have been able to see it,” Treuer says. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.

When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place,........

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