On Rurrenabaque’ s doorstep, and covering nearly nineteen
thousand square kilometres, PARQUE NACIONAL MADIDI is home to
some of the most diverse plant and animal life in South America.
In altitude it ranges from less than 300m to over 5500m above
sea level, encompassing a variety of Andean and Amazonian
ecosystems that range from dense tropical rainforests and
seasonally flooded savannahs to pristine cloudforest and glacial
mountain peaks. The park is home to an astonishing variety of
wildlife: more than seven hundred species of animal have been
recorded, along with some 860 species of bird, although the
total may be more like one thousand – more than in the whole of
North America. There are also more than five thousand species of
flowering plant. Madidi was recognized as a national park in
1995 and, together with the neighbouring Pilon Lajas reserve and
Parque Nacional Tambopata-Candamo across the border in Peru,
forms a corridor of biodiversity that is generally considered to
be one of the 25 most critical