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The National Park "Podocarpus"
by Jorge Aguirre | 27-08-2013 06:45 0 recommendations
I was looking for a good topic to talk at my finals articles, and what it's better that making an article about a natural park of your region, so i decided to talk about the national Park Podocarpus, so the last week i went with my brother to enjoy the diversity nature that we can appreciate in this extraordinary park, we go to the pathway of the "Oso de Anteojos", and we can appreciate the extraordinary view at the mountain peak, it was a really interesting excursion.
The National Park "Podocarpus" was called Podocarpus because of a characteristically tree of the region that it's the only conifer endemic of the country, the interesting thing about this extraordinary park it's that is located at the base east of the "Cordillera de los Andes", in the provinces of Loja and Zamora in Ecuador, and The area in general is characterized by a topography dominated by valleys and steep slopes and very irregular relief formed by mountains and hills. In the upper parts of the moors are glacial lakes where born four major watersheds that are really important for the Provinces of Loja and Zamora, because of all of this characteristics it's a Mega diverse region and have a big grade of endemism, also because of the sub-climates that presents in the park we can find 560 species of Birds, 46 mammals, 19 species of amphibians and 11 of reptiles, those are a lot of species in just 146.280 km2 that has the park, also in this extraordinary park we have a really interesting plant the "Cinchona Officinalis" that was a really important plant in the control of the Malaria, it provide the cure to this disease.
The podocarpus has the 40% of species of birds in Ecuador and 6% of birds in all the world, but the biologics believe that can be more than 800 of species of birds because of the diversity of the forests, also the park has 100 ponds, and there are so many species of animal but the more recognized are the oso de anteojos (bear of anteojos), the puma, the tigrillo, tapir andino, ciervo enano, pinchaflor ojidorado, Thamnofilus unicolor, Perico Cachetidorado, pajaro paraguas, Passiflora loxensis the park it's a wonderful place for have an special time with the family, friends enjoying with the wild life.
This wonderful park also have problems, there is confirmed that in the mountains we can find gold so, there are some people that try illegally to take the gold, and this affect to the balance of the ecosystem also there are people that in a illegally way try to live in the park without permission and it can be really dangerous for the species that live at the park.