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Peru Tours and Travel

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Amaaon Lodges in The Tambopata Reserve

The Tambopata Candamo Reserved Zone (TCRZ) is a 3.7 million acre reserve in southeastern Amazonian Peru created in 1990 by the national government working in partnership with local grassroots and international conservation organizations. This reserve protects the biological diversity of the entire watersheds of the Tavara and the Candamo Rivers and most of the watershed of the Tambopata River.The declaration and the design of the reserve includes an underlying philosophy of sustainable development and conservation of forest resources. The TCRZ protects habitats ranging from the Andean highlands around the rivers' headwaters through some of the last remaining intact cloud forests to the lowland rainforests of the Amazon basin. Over 1,300 bird species (including 32 parrot species - 10% of the world's total), 200 mammal species, 90 frog species, 1,200 butterfly species and 10,000 species of higher plants are protected within this reserve.

The world's largest known mineral clay lick, where hundreds of parrots and macaws of up to 15 species congregate daily to ingest the detoxifying clay, is also within the reserve, less than 500 meters from Tambopata Research Center.

Adjacent the northwestern corner of the reserve is the Ese'eja Native Community, adding its 10,000 hectares of communally-owned and managed tropical rain forests to the Reserved Zone's. Within this territory is Posada Amazonas, a community-owned lodge and tourism operation which is an excellent base from which to explore the endangered wildlife species within (including harpy eagles and giant river otters).

To help place the TCRZ in perspective, forests similar to those contained within this Connecticut-sized reserve have world record diversities in bird, butterfly, dragonfly, beetle and fly taxa. A world record 331 species of birds were seen and heard in one day in southeastern Amazonian Peru by just walking on trails and paddling a canoe.

Again, in only six square miles of these forests scientists have recorded a world record 560 species of birds, or 200 more species than in similar-sized patches of unhunted forests in the famous but animal-poor Manaus region of Brazil. You will find that in the uniquely species- rich belt of forests at the foot of the Andes the lodges of the Tambopata and Manu offer the only unhunted, well-protected, rich soil sites. Consequently, our sites offer some of the best probabilities in the world of viewing jaguars, giant otters, monkeys, peccaries, and flocks of a hundred or more macaws.

In 1993, a team of scientists from a variety of disciplines presented the Peruvian government a zoning plan for the huge TCRZ. The plan divided the reserve into 5 categories of different intensity levels of management. The National Park category was proposed for a 700,000 hectare portion of completely uninhabited (except for TRC) forests including TRC and the macaw clay lick. In July of 1996, the government declared half of this area as the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. The rest of the reserve remains protected as a transitional conservation unit until further studies are undertaken determining the area's gas, agriculture, timber and tourism resources and potentials. Fortunately, Tambopata Research Center and the macaw clay lick were included in the area directly across the river from the National Park, and Posada Amazonas is well within the lands owned and managed by the Ese'eja native community. The intangible nature of National Parks in Peru, and the inalieanable rights of Native Communities to their lands, assures that some of the last remaining wild populations of large, spectacular Amazonian wildlife will be safeguarded, guaranteeing the quality of our operations.