Cueva de los Guácharos National Natural Park ( en, Cave of the Oilbirds) is the oldest

national park A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...

. Located in the western face of the Colombian Eastern

Andean The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S l ...

Range in the departments of Huila and Caquetá, the park covers an area of . The caves formed from the

karst Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, Dolomite (rock), dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathe ...

ic zones of the Magdalena and Caquetá rivers. The park is intended to protect the

cloud forest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud ...

and

páramo Páramo () can refer to a variety of alpine tundra ecosystems located in the Andes Mountain Range, South America. Some ecologists describe the páramo broadly as "all high, tropical, montane vegetation above the continuous timberline". A narrowe ...

ecosystems. This area hosts one of the last intact oak forests in the country, with the native oak species ''

Quercus humboldtii ''Quercus humboldtii'', commonly known as the Andean oak, Colombian oak or roble, is a species of oak found only in Colombia and Panamá. It is named for Alexander von Humboldt. Description ''Quercus humboldtii'' is an evergreen tree which gro ...

'' ( Bonpl.) and '' Trigonobalanus excelsa'' (Lozano, 1979)).

Biodiversity

In 2005, the National Natural Parks System identified 296 registered species of birds in the park. Further recorded species are:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cueva de los Guacharos Biosphere reserves of Colombia National parks of Colombia Geography of Huila Department Geography of Caquetá Department Tourist attractions in Huila Department Tourist attractions in Caquetá Department 1960 establishments in Colombia Protected areas established in 1960