The Bahuaja Sonene Natural Park

The Bahuaja Sonene National Park; It is located in the provinces of Tambopata, Carabaya and Sandia, in the departments of Madre de Dios and Puno respectively.

The size of its territory is 1’091,416 hectares. This park seeks to conserve a large number of habitats that host diversity of flora and fauna, there is a variety of wildlife in both the southern and northern Peruvian Amazon. Bahuaja Sonene protects unique resources in Peru, such as the tropical humid savanna in “Pampas del Heath”, habitat of species such as the deer of the marshes and the maned wolf, and the formations of the Candamo valley in Tambopata.

Within this Park, the ideological and cultural features of the Ese’eja culture, an ethnic group originally and ancestrally linked to these territories, are also protected. Likewise, its establishment contributes to the sustainable development of the Madre de Dios and Puno regions.

The Bahuaja Sonene National Park is located in the humid forest region of southwestern Amazonia and has typical habitats of this forest and the tropical premontane rain forest or jungle. The area has lakes or oxbow lakes, palm swamps and seasonally flooded areas. Among the habitats that stand out are the Pampas del Heath, which motivated the creation of a sanctuary in 1983 for its conservation.

This plain is mostly composed of pastures up to 2 m high, has small agglomerations of palm trees that become islands when the pampas are completely flooded between December and April. In addition, its presence determines the southern limit of the continent’s tropical forests, which are transformed from here into the extensive savannahs on the border of Peru and Bolivia.

The area that encompasses the Bahuaja Sonene National Park is a territory since time immemorial of the Ese’eja ethnic group, belonging to the Tacana linguistic family, who today are concentrated in the areas owned by the community of Infierno, Palma Real and Sonene, adjoining the Park. A fourth native neighbor community, Kotsimba, corresponds to the Pukirieri ethnic group, of the Harakmbut family.

The Bahuaja Sonene National Park is the link that connects the protected natural areas of Peru with those of Bolivia “adjacent to the Bolivian National Park of Madidi”, in the proposed Conservation Corridor Vilcabamba Amboró. Visiting this corner of the country offers anyone the reasons to preserve our biological and cultural diversity. Visiting our Amazon makes us realize the complex system of life that has always worked perfectly and that dazzles us with its natural beauty.

In the Bahuaja Sonene National Park, the presence of more than 610 bird species has been reported -380 of them in the Heath River sector- among which 7 species of macaws stand out, the pink spatula “Ajaia ajaja”, the condor of the jungle “Sarcoramphus papa” and the harpy eagle “Harpya harpyja”. Similarly, it is estimated that more than 181 species of mammals inhabit inside, among which stand out the mountain dogs “Speothos venaticus”, “Cerdocyon thous” and “Atelocynus microtis”, the giant otter or river wolf “Pteronura brasiliensis “, the deer of the marshes” Blastocerus dichotomus “and the singular wolf of mane” Chrysocyon brachyurus “; these last two, emblematic species of the pampas del Heath that do not exist anywhere else in Peru.

In the same way you can also find species like: the jaguar “Panthera onca”, the anteater “Myrmecophaga tridactyla”, the black maquisapa “Ateles paniscus”, and the giant armadillo “Priodontes maximus”. Among the reptiles and amphibians, the presence of more than 50 species has been determined, among which stand out: the anaconda “Eunectes marinus”, the black caiman “Melanosuchus niger”, and the taricaya “Podocnemis unifilis”; There are also 6 endemic species of frogs. The existence of 182 species of fish and 1,200 species of butterflies has also been reported.

The Bahuaja Sonene National Park protects the only wet tropical savanna area in Peru, where palm trees abound, such as the “Mauritia flexuosa” aguaje, forming islands on the dozens of grass species that grow on the floodplains that are the refuge for wildlife highly diverse In the area of ​​the Candamo river basin you can find palm trees, “Cedrelinga cateniformis” screw and “Hevea guianensis” rubber.

In the sector with higher altitude there are dwarf forests composed of shrubs and small trees. The high diversity of plant communities in all sectors of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park also includes several economically important forest species such as: the mahogany “Swietenia macrophylla” the cedar “Cedrela odorata”, the chestnut “Bertholletia excelsa” and many palms such as: the ungurahui “Oenocarpus bataua”, the pona “Iriartea deltoides” and the huasaí “Euterpe sp.”

The Tambopata River allows adventure tourism “rafting and other activities”