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Saturday, December 21, 2024
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Barro Colorado Island
Barro Colorado Island
A day visit to this 3,865-acre/1,564-hectare island in Gatún Lake will give you an informative peek into the awesome diversity of tropical rainforest ecosystems. Fossils date back 30 million years and a magnificent ceiba tree that was old when the conquistadors arrived towers above the lianas, bromeliads, orchids, strangler figs, cashews, oaks, palms and trees that “walk.” The ceiba, or “the big tree,” as it is called, is so large that smaller trees are growing from its massive branches. Twenty men holding hands with arms outstretched would barely encircle its trunk.
Barro Colorado’s steep, hilly forests host five monkey species, tapirs, coatimundis, anteaters, peccaries, sloths, ocelots, agoutis, rare red deer and 385 bird species. Howler and squirrel monkey troops are often encountered, and I once spent 10 minutes playing peek-a-boo with a young vested anteater that was too curious to run away. He kept me in wary sight as he sidled around and around his tree to prevent me from taking his photograph. Other identified creatures include 70 bat species, 40 frog species, 47 snake species, 22 lizard species, at least 300 butterfly species, and 200 identified ant species, including 14 of army ants.
Barro Colorado was created during the Panama Canal’s construction when the Chagres River was dammed and an area almost the size of Barbados was flooded to create 166-square-mile/430-square-kilometer Gatún Lake. The process took four years, from 1910 to 1914. When it was completed, only the tops of the tallest hills remained above the water. Barro Colorado Island is the largest of these. In 1923, the island was declared a biological reserve and one of the NewWorld’s first protected tropical rainforests. Since1946, it has been administered by the Panamá-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), a world-renowned biological research facility with labs, libraries, and living quarters for the scientists who study here. In 1977, five small islands and adjacent peninsulas were added to create Barro Colorado Nature Monument.
Last updated November 26, 2007
Posted in Panamá | Panamá City
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