What is so special about Yasuni National Park?
What is so special about Yasuni National Park?
Yasuni National Park is according to some studies the most biodiverse place on Earth. Situated in a unique area where the Andes meet the Amazon converging to create a hotspot for amphibians, mammals, bird and insect life to flourish. The area spans some 980,000 hectares and was made a World Biosphere Reserve in 1989.
What has been threatening the Yasuni National Park?
Deforestation ramping up in Yasuni as Ecuador sets to open up national park to drilling. Yasuni National park has been in the conservation spotlight in recent years, with oil drilling threatening the forests and wildlife of this biodiversity hotspot.
Is Yasuni part of the Amazon rainforest?
Yasuni National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Yasuní) is in Ecuador with an area of 9,823 km2 between the Napo and Curaray Rivers in Napo and Pastaza Provinces in Amazonian Ecuador. The national park lies within the Napo moist forests ecoregion and is primarily rain forest.
Does the Yasuni National Park have many different types of organisms?
The Yasuni National Park contains an amazing Diversity of Life, visible on its flora and fauna. There are amazing numbers!, for example, more than 200 mammalian species, more than 650 bird species, more than 120 species of reptiles, more than 147 amphibian species and more than 600 fish species.
Why is Yasuni National Park at risk?
Yasuni National Park The ecologically and culturally rich area is at risk from an increasing demand for the large natural reserves of oil stored underground.
How many species are in Yasuni National Park?
A total of 33 species are listed as fauna in the process of extinction, according to IUCN categorization. The Yasuni Biosphere Reserve is one of the most diverse ornithological sites in the world, with 610 registered species.
Why is the Yasuni National Park important?
Yasuni is an area of land comprised of Yasuni National Park, Waorani Ethnic Reserve, and an encompassing “Untouchable Zone,” designated to protect indigenous peoples and wildlife from environmental and cultural exploitation. Many indigenous tribes, and over 4,000 plant species and 173 mammals call Yasuni home.
What animals live in Yasuni National Park?
Wildlife in Yasuni National Park includes jaguars, caimans, toucans, macaws, monkeys, turtles, marmosets, and many, many more. There are anacondas in Yasuni National Park as well as piranhas in its waters. Because of the hundreds of species of birds Yasuni is considered to be birdwatchers paradise.
What is Yasuni plan?
The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was a project that attempted to keep over a billion barrels of oil in the ground under the Yasuni National Park, a biosphere reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The reserve had around 846 million barrels or 20% of the country’s proven oil reserve.
How big is Yasuni National Park?
3,793 mi²
Parque Nacional Yasuní/Area
How do I get to Yasuni National Park?
To get to Yasuni, you’ll need to travel by plane and boat (down the Napo River). The most common way to get there is to travel to Puerto Francisco de Orellana (Coca) and then travel by boat (two and a half hours down the Napo River) to Yasuni.
Why did Yasuni ITT fail?
He argued that the world has failed Ecuador by contributing little of the money the government had hoped to raise, and said the oil revenues would be used to end poverty. We always knew it would be difficult to cut through the oil interests.
Who are the indigenous people of Yasuni National Park?
The park is about 250 km from Quito and was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989. It is within the claimed ancestral territory of the Huaorani indigenous people. Yasuni is also home to two uncontacted indigenous tribes, the Tagaeri and the Taromenane.
How much oil is in Yasuni National Park?
Yasuni National Park is home to an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil – 40 percent of Ecuador’s reserves – in the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha (ITT) oil fields. Environmentalists and scientists such as Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson, and Stuart Pimm urged the government to leave the resources untapped.
Where is the Yasuni research station in Ecuador?
This is an image of the grounds at Yasuni Research Station in Ecuador, located in Yasuni National Park along the bank of the Tiputini River. Yasuni National Park ( Spanish: Parque Nacional Yasuní) is in Ecuador with an area of 9,823 km 2 between the Napo and Curaray Rivers in Napo and Pastaza Provinces in Amazonian Ecuador.
How big is the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador?
Within the northwest region of the park is a Forest Dynamics Plot, a 50 hectare research plot created in 1995 by a collaboration between Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador (PUCE), the Aarhus University in Denmark, and ForestGEO-STRI. Yasuni National Park hosts a large diversity of insects.