Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
endangered Chaco peccary, an enormous piglike creature known only from fossil remains
until 1976; the elusive spectacled bear; or the Golden Palace titi monkey, which hit the
world headlines when a Canadian casino paid a fortune for the rights to name it.
Among the most threatened wildlife in the highlands are the little-known deer, the
North Andean huemul, the Andean hairy armadillo and the endemic short-tailed
chinchilla, sought out for its luxurious fur. The windswept lakes of the southern Altiplano
are the exclusive habitat of the rare James flamingo, while the charming Cochabamba
mountain finch has a total range of just 3500 sq km perilously close to the outskirts of the
city of Cochabamba.
The Amazon Basin may be famous for its
pink river dolphins, but rather lesser-known is
the blue-throated macaw (barba azul), a spe-
cies considered critically endangered and
thought to number fewer than 300 individuals.
The mythical unicorn bird of the Yungas, more
properly known as the horned currasow, was
long thought to be extinct until its recent rediscovery. In the Pantanal region the golden
spear-nosed bat lives only in a handful of caves, while the hyacinth macaw has suffered
for its comical appearance through capture for the pet trade.
Some of Bolivia's most remarkable threatened species, however, won't win any awards
for attractiveness. Consider the bizarre marsupial frogs of the genus Gastrotheca , which
includes five species in Bolivia that are all threatened with extinction, and the Jabba the
Hutt-like Titicaca giant frog, confined to Bolivia's most famous lake. The latter can
weigh up to 400g and is under extreme pressure because of a local belief that drinking the
juice from the liquidized amphibian has aphrodisiacal properties. You can find more in-
formation about them online at http://bolivianamphibianinitiative.org .
More than 40% of the Bolivian territory is affected
by desertification caused by climate change, popu-
lation increase and indiscriminate forest felling.
EL CHAQUEO: THE BIG SMOKE
Each dry season, from July to September, Bolivia's skies fill with a thick pall of smoke, obscuring the air, occa-
sionally canceling flights, aggravating allergies and causing respiratory strife. This is all the result of el chaqueo ,
the slashing and burning of the savannas (and some forest) for agricultural and grazing land. A prevailing notion
is that the rising smoke forms rain clouds and ensures good rains for the coming season. In reality the hydrologic-
al cycle, which depends on transpiration from the forest canopy, is interrupted by the deforestation resulting in di-
minished rainfall.
 
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