Cerros de Amotape

Cerros de Amotape National Park was established in 1975 at the north-western tip of Peru, between the regions of Tumbes and Piura, and protects some 1,515 km².

It preserves the largest protected expanse of equatorial dry forest in the country, an ecosystem particular to the Tumbesian region that extends across south-western Ecuador and north-western Peru and that is reckoned one of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots in the world. The vegetation is of deciduous trees adapted to a long dry season — ceibo, algarrobo, hualtaco, guayacán — which shed their leaves and turn spectacularly green with the rains, above all in El Niño years.

Its position on the transition between the Amazonian, the Andean and the dry Pacific faunas produces very high endemism, with species confined to the Tumbesian region, among them numerous birds. The park is home to the Tumbes howler monkey, endemic and threatened, the neotropical otter, the American crocodile in the nearby mangroves and a birdlife with dozens of endemics. It forms the core of the North-West Biosphere Reserve, recognised by UNESCO in 1977, Peru's first, which was later extended as the Noroeste Amotapes-Manglares Biosphere Reserve.