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Chaco National Park
The Chaco National Park is a national park of Argentina, located in the province of Chaco. It has an area of 150 km. It was created in 1954 in order to protect a sample of the Eastern Chaco, composed mainly of warm lowlands, with an annual summer rainfall between 750 and 1,300 mm.
This park is a protected area for the quebracho trees. Forests of quebracho colorado chaqueno (Schinopsis balansae) were once located in the north of Santa Fe and the western half of Chaco, and had entered the northeast region of the province of Corrientes. Its strong wood and its abundant tannin caused it to be over-exploited for a century.
The area harbors several environments: scrubland, savanna, swamps, and small lakes. The scrubland is the habitat of the red quebracho, the white quebracho, the algarrobo, and the lapacho (all of these commercially valuable species). The fauna includes large predators such as cougars. In the lakes one finds yacares (the local equivalent of alligators) and capibaras. Elsewhere there are armadillos, tapirs and viscachas, as well as birds (more than 340 species). The fauna also includes the caraya monkey.
Indigenous communities of the Mocovi and Toba peoples are found in the protected area.
References
Administracion de Parques Nacionales - Argentina's National Park Administration (in Spanish)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Chaco National Park
