At Playa Cativo the newest onsite conservation program is the establishment of the Playa Cativo Lodge Research & Conservation Program (PIC-PCL), a pragmatic conservation initiative led by resident biologist, Alejandra Rojas Barrantes, who is a graduate in Tropical Biology. Her journey at Playa Cativo Lodge began as a naturalist guide, and over the past several years the lodge has been a platform where she learned to weave science, storytelling, and community into meaningful conservation.

The program, launched in December 2025, is redefining what it means to travel responsibly. Guests trade passive observation for active participation, becoming citizen scientists who record bird sightings, capture wildlife photographs, and help build the first integral ecological baseline for a coastal forest in Piedras Blancas National Park, one of Costa Rica’s least visited and studied protected areas, despite it’s incredible biodiversity. Guests leave not only with memories of pristine beaches and rainforest animals, but with a deeper understanding of biodiversity and their role in safeguarding it.

This is sustainable tourism at its most authentic, where luxury and responsibility coexist, and where every traveler contributes to a collective mission: to know, to care, and to act. Playa Cativo Lodge is proving that conservation can be not only pragmatic, but also immersive, and participatory.