El Tuparro National Natural Park ( es, Parque Nacional Natural El Tuparro) is a

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 ...

located in the

Vichada Department Vichada Department ( es, Departamento del Vichada, link=no, ) is a department of the Republic of Colombia in South America. Vichada is located in the eastern plains of Colombia, in the Orinoquía Region within the Orinoco river basin borderi ...

in the Orinoquía Region of Colombia. It is the only protected area in the Eastern Plains (''

Llanos The Llanos ( Spanish ''Los Llanos'', "The Plains"; ) is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the tropical and subtropical grassla ...

Orientales'') under Colombia's Natural Parks System. One of its main attractions is the mighty stream ''Raudal de Maypures'' (Maipures Rapids), called the " Eighth Wonder of the World" by German explorer

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister ...

in the 19th century.

Geography

The flat area is bounded by the

Orinoco River The Orinoco () is one of the longest rivers in South America at . Its drainage basin, sometimes known as the Orinoquia, covers , with 76.3 percent of it in Venezuela and the remainder in Colombia. It is the fourth largest river in the wor ...

to the east, the Tomo River to the north and the

Tuparro River Tuparro River is a river of Colombia found in Vichada Department. It gives its name to El Tuparro National Natural Park. Tuparro is part of the Orinoco River basin. See also *List of rivers of Colombia References

*Rand McNally, The New Inter ...

to the south. It was created in 1970 and covers an area of 548,000 hectares. In addition to the park's two broad types of natural ecosystems,

flooded A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

and non-flooded

savannas A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

, it also has five types of

riparian forest A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered chann ...

s. Average yearly rainfall is 2477 mm in the western region and 2939 mm in the eastern. Average temperature is 27 °C.

Savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland- grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground ...

s cover 75% of the area, and

gallery forest A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above th ...

s covering the rest. Predominating plants include the

Moriche Palm ''Mauritia flexuosa'', known as the moriche palm, ''ité'' palm, ''ita'', ''buriti'', ''muriti'', ''miriti'' (Brazil), ''canangucho'' (Colombia), ''acho'' (Ecuador), or ''aguaje'' (Peru), is a palm tree. It grows in and near swamps and other wet ...

and the tree ''

Caraipa ''Caraipa'' is a plant genus in the family Calophyllaceae.Stephens, P.F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website The Angiosperm Phylogeny Website (or APweb) is a website dedicated to research on angiosperm phylogeny and taxonomy. The si ...

llanorum''. The dominant vegetation on the non-flooded savannas is grass. The park is home to 74 species of mammals, 320 birds (many of them marine), 17 reptiles, 26 fish and five primate species. Amphibians are significantly diverse due to the variety of ecosystems in the area. Notable birds include guans,

curassow Curassows are one of the three major groups of cracid birds. They comprise the largest-bodied species of the cracid family. Three of the four genera are restricted to tropical South America; a single species of ''Crax'' ranges north to Mexico ...

screamer The screamers are three South American bird species placed in family Anhimidae. They were thought to be related to the Galliformes because of similar bills, but are more closely related to ducks (family Anatidae),Todd, F. (1991) and most closel ...

eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...

s and

duck Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form ...

s. Mammals found on the savanna include

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

giant armadillo The giant armadillo (''Priodontes maximus''), colloquially ''tatu-canastra'', ''tatou'', ''ocarro'' or ''tatú carreta'', is the largest living species of armadillo (although their extinct relatives, the glyptodonts, were much larger). It live ...

, small savanna

armadillo Armadillos (meaning "little armored ones" in Spanish) are New World placental mammals in the order Cingulata. The Chlamyphoridae and Dasypodidae are the only surviving families in the order, which is part of the superorder Xenarthra, alo ...

, and

tapir Tapirs ( ) are large, herbivorous mammals belonging to the family Tapiridae. They are similar in shape to a pig, with a short, prehensile nose trunk. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South and Central America, with one species inh ...

Peccaries A peccary (also javelina or skunk pig) is a medium-sized, pig-like hoofed mammal of the family Tayassuidae (New World pigs). They are found throughout Central and South America, Trinidad in the Caribbean, and in the southwestern area of North ...

, pumas,

jaguar The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large cat species and the only living member of the genus ''Panthera'' native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the largest cat species in the Americas and the th ...

s inhabit the woodlands.

References

Citations

Works cited

External links

*
The park's page at Parques Nacionales Naturales de Colombia
{{authority control National parks of Colombia Geography of Vichada Department Protected areas established in 1970 1970 establishments in Colombia Tourist attractions in Vichada Department National Monuments of Colombia Llanos