Tambopata - Tropical rainforest and tropical cloud forest habitat
04 September 2018 (2136 visits)Tambopata Ecolodge Private Conservation Area is situated within the buffer zone of Tambopata National Reserve (TNR), a protected natural area covering 678,800 acres, bordering the 2,696,919 acre Bahuaja Sonene National Park and contributing to an immense area totaling more than 3,000,000 acres of protected tropical forest.
Tambopata National Reserve and its neighbor, Bahuaja-Sonene National Park, protect the southwestern Amazon tropical humid forest, tropical rainforest and tropical cloud forest foothill habitats of southeastern Peru.
The original Tambopata Candamo Reserved Zone (now known as Tambopata National Reserve) was brought into being by ministerial resolution in January 1990, creating an area of approximately 3.5 million acres as a first step towards a future policy of land management in the region and to protect the area while it was surveyed in order to determine that future policy.
The Bahuaja Sonene National Park was established on September 10th 2000, and together with Tambopata National Reserve a cross border park system was formed with Bolivia’s newly created Madidi National Park, resulting in the largest protected zone of tropical forest in South America.
Tambopata Ecolodge was established in 1991. Following a long process during which we worked to protect the forest around us and consolidated our philosophy founded upon a symbiotic relationship between conservation of tropical forest ecosystems and responsible ecotourism, our own Tambopata Private Conservation Area received official Peruvian government recognition in 2016. It is now the largest conservation area in its category in Peru.
The Tambopata river basin is recognized as one of the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems. In the forests around the Tambopata River, naturalists have recorded 632 species of birds, 120 butterfly species, 169 different mammals, 205 species of fish, 103 amphibian species, and 67 species of reptile.
Tambopata protects a total of eight ecosystems: subtropical humid forest, tropical humid forest, subtropical high-humidity forest, subtropical high-humidity foothill cloud forest, subtropical rainforest, tropical cloud forest foothills, subtropical lower foothill cloud forest and semi-flooded subtropical lower foothill cloud forest.
These ecosystems harbor a vast array of plant life, including exploited rainforest species such as cedar (Cedrela odorata), mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) and Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa).
The threatened or vulnerable species of fauna protected by Tambopata National Reserve include the giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis), giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus), black spider monkey (Ateles paniscus), jaguar (Panthera onca), yellow-spotted side-necked river turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) and green anaconda (Eunectes murinus).
In addition to illegal logging activities, the threats currently faced by Tambopata National Reserve and surrounding forests include agriculture, gold mining, hunting and fishing. A major threat to the Tambopata area as a whole has been the paving of the road from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado, which has helped open up the Madre de Dios region of Peru to migrants from the Andes.
