Tambopata National Reserve

Tambopata National Reserve and Bahuaja-Sonene National Park border one another in the southern Peruvian Amazon region. The area contains high levels of biodiversity and beautiful natural landscapes. The two protected areas were initially declared as a reserved zone in the early 1990s. Subsequently, after a drawn-out consultation process and negotiations with stakeholders, two definitive areas were set aside as a national park and reserve.

The Tambopata Reserve covers 275,000 hectares of land protecting the watersheds of the Tambopata and the Candamo rivers.

The protected area features eight life zones: suptropical humid forest, tropical humid forest, suptropical high-humidity forest, suptropical high-humidity foothills cloud forest, subtropical rainforest, tropical cloud forest foothills, subtropical lower foothills cloud forest and semi-flooded subtropical premontane cloud forest.(1)

The main rivers that flow through the area are the Tambopata, Malinowski, la Torre, Tavara, Candamo and Guacamayo. The main rivers flowing around the area are the Heath, Inambari and Madre de Dios. A series of smaller rivers and gullies make up the rest of the area’s watershed.

Tambopata features a high diversity of habitats, and therefore an incredible number of species are represented (2). In the Andes there are high levels of endemism (3), and this is true in the protected area as well.  The protected area is concentrates rich biodiversity for several groups of organisms (4). The protected area features common species and concentrates a rich biological diversity in several groups of organisms. The Tambopata River watershed is considered to be one of the world’s richest ecosystems in terms of biodiversity. An indicator of this vast wealth is the fact that in an area of just 550 hectares, researchers have found 91 species of mammals, 570 birds, 127 reptiles and amphibians and 94 fish, among other surprising records