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Priceless Digital Photos and Documents of Costa Rican Eco-Community Rescued
MB Magazine
May 2008
When ecologist Eugenio García López couldn’t’ access files on his laptop’s hard drive, he was naturally upset. Many of
the files were irreplaceable documentation, photographs of threatened species and important evidence gathered and
used by the Costa Rican based Fundación Dúrika (Durika Foundation) to fight environmental crimes against the Durika
Biological Reserve. López, a member of the self-sustaining ecocommunity situated 1,650 meters above sea level, contacted
his Canadian colleague and friend, Warren Goldblatt, a teacher at Burlington Central High School.
Goldblatt, a member of Friends of Durika, a not-for-profit Canadian organization which supports the work undertaken
by the Durika community, advised López to ship the hard drive to him. The drive traveled 3800 kilometers from López’s home
to its final destination; the laboratory of Markham’s CBL Data Recovery Technologies.
In CBL’s cleanroom at its Alden Road headquarters, technicians successfully recovered the files and returned them on an external hard
drive to Goldblatt, who personally delivered the data to López in Costa Rica in March.
“The photographs represent hundreds of hours of research by biologists in the rain while hiking through dense, virgin jungle
where no one probably has ever been before,” explains López. “Many of these photographs represent the only
scientific evidence of new discoveries of plant and animal species that are at risk of extinction.”
Adds López, “As the only environmental police in the area, the information and images the Fundación Dúrika collects are used
to prosecute offenders involved in such destructive activities as setting forest fires or deforestation. These photographs are
crucial to us in order to successfully proceed with cases and bring the offenders to justice.”
“This particular recovery was very satisfying to CBL staff. Customers often expect that their data won’t be recoverable,”
comments Tim Margeson, General Manager of CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. “Hard drives containing priceless,
irreplaceable data come through our doors daily. So whether you’re living in the cloud forest a mile above sea level or on
the Arctic tundra, if your computer crashes and you cannot access files, don’t panic. The odds are in your favour that CBL
will get your data back.”
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