The Tambopata Research Center is a simple but comfortable 18 bedroom lodge situated by the world’s largest Macaw Clay Lick on the uninhabited frontier of the Tambopata National Reserve and the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. It was established to aid the protection of these magnificent birds and has a long-term research project to ensure the survival of their populations. It is unrivalled in its access to pristine Amazonian forests, having no neighbors, and due to its distance from human populations, requires a stopover in Refugio Amazonas.

The Tambopata National Reserve is a 275,000 hectare conservation unit created by the Peruvian government in 1990 to protect the watersheds of the Tambopata and Candamo rivers. It is adjacent to the huge 1 million hectare Bahuaja Sonene National Park. Located in Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios, Peru.

While the reserve was created with an underlying philosophy of sustainable resource use, the park was created with the purpose of wholeheartedly protecting the forests within. Both units protect some of the last untouched lowland and premontane tropical humid forests in the Amazon. This Connecticut-sized (or Switzerland-sized) area of pristine forest contains 1300 bird species, 32 parrot species (10% of the world’s total), 200 mammal species, 1200 butterfly species and over 10,000 species of vascular plants.

Less than 5000 people (equivalent to a minor league sports event) inhabit the reserve’s “area of influence” to the north. They make a living off slash and burn agriculture, small scale gold mining, timber extraction, hunting and fishing. One thousand Ese’ejas live in four titled communities within this area of influence. The undergoing pavement of the Inter-oceanic highway, joining Brazil’s north Atlantic coast with Peru’s Pacific Coast and access to the Asian markets presents the principal threat over the mid term to this region’s incomparable wilderness.

Go Back To Tambopata Reserve and Macaw Clay Lick