The head of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias' environmental program Peace With Nature has asked the president to declare a moratorium on open-pit mining following protests over a gold mine near the northern border. This comes eight months after Arias repealed a ban on open-pit metal mining...Pedro León, head of Peace With Nature...said few experiences with metallic mining in the tropics have been positive...León declined to comment directly on the case of Las Crucitas – a Canadian-owned open-pit gold mine located a few kilometers from the Río San Juan...because of a series of legal challenges currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.