Iguazú National Park

This article is about the Argentine National Park. For the Brazilian National Park, see Iguaçu National Park.

Iguazú National Park
IUCN category II (national park)
View of a section of the waterfall
Location within Argentina
Location	Misiones Province, Argentina
Coordinates	25°37′S 54°20′W
Area	677 km2 (261 sq mi)
Established	1934
Governing body	Administración de Parques Nacionales
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Type	Natural
Criteria	vii, x
Designated	1984 (8th session)
Reference no.	303
Region	Latin America and the Caribbean

Iguazú National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Iguazú) is a national park in Argentina. It is in the Iguazú Department. It is in the north part of the province of Misiones, Argentine Mesopotamia. It is 677 km² (261 sq mi) big.

History

Aerial view of the Iguazu River.

People lived in this place 10,000 years ago. They were hunter-gatherers in the Eldoradense people. About 1,000 CE, the Guaraní, pushed the Eldoradense people away. The Guarani made farms. In the 16th century, the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores pushed the Guarani away too, but many of the names of places come from Guarani words. For example, the river is Guaraní y guasu, "large water." The first European to visit the place was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, in 1542. The Jesuits built a place to turn people into Christians in 1609.

The government made the place a park in 1934 to protect Iguazu Falls and the subtropical jungle around it.

The Iguazú National Reserve was defined by law 18.801 of October 7, 1970 as being the western part of the Iguazú National Park. In the rest of the park, people are not allowed to make too many changes, but in the reserve, people can do and build some things. For example, there are an airport and hotels there now.

The Brazilian park Iguaçu National Park is on the other side of the Iguazu River. UNESCO said both parks were a World Heritage Sites in 1984.

The park might be part of the proposed Trinational Biodiversity Corridor, which makes a way through the forest in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina in the Upper Paraná place. The southeast part of the park is next to the 84,000 hectares (210,000 acres) Urugua-í Provincial Park, created in 1990.

Animals and plants

The park is in the Alto Paraná Atlantic forests ecoregion. Many animals live in the park: jaguar, jaguarundi, South American tapir, ocelot, tirica, anteater, the black-fronted piping guan, the harpy eagle, the yacare caiman, the great dusky swift, large toucans, the coatí, and many butterflies. The vinaceous amazon, named for its wine-colored feathers, is sometimes in this park.

The Iguazú River ends in the Paraná River 23 km past the waterfalls, after a 1320 km way. Inside the park, it becomes up to 1,500 m wide. It goes south and then north in a U-shape. Trees grow next to the river, for example the ceibo (Cockspur coral tree), whose flower is Argentina's national flower. There are many plants in the park: lapacho negro and lapacho amarillo (family Bignoniaceae), and palmito trees and the 40-metre-high palo rosa (family Apocynaceae).

Pictures

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  Plush-crested jay (Cyanocorax chrysops)
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  View of waterfall
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  View of waterfall
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  View of waterfall
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  Distant view of waterfall
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  Ecological Train
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Other websites

• Rainforest Ecological Train
• Iguaçu National Park (Brazilian side of the park)
• Iguazu Falls

Sources

• Araújo Corte, Dione Angélica de; Valladares-Pádua, Cláudio Benedito (November 2007), Plano de Manejo da Estação Ecológica Mico-Leão-Preto (PDF) (in Portuguese), Brasília: ICMBio, archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-11-07, retrieved 2016-11-07
• "Cataratas del Iguazú y el Río Iguazú", ArgentinaXplora (in Spanish), retrieved 2016-11-10
• Dinerstein, Olson, D. M, E.; et al. (2001), "Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth", BioScience, 51 (11), doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0933:TEOTWA]2.0.CO;2, archived from the original on 2011-10-14{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• "Iguazú: Antecedentes Normativos - Límites", Patrimonionatural.com (in Spanish), retrieved 2016-11-10
• Levingston, Moyano LLerena (7 October 1970), Declaracion y Deslinde de la Reserva Nacional Iguazu del Parque Nacional Iguazu (in Spanish), retrieved 2016-11-10
• Parque Provincial "Urugua-í" (in Spanish), Ministerio de Ecología y RNR de la Provincia de Misiones, archived from the original on 2016-08-21, retrieved 2016-11-09

Other websites

• Official web site
• Administración de Parques Nacionales - National Parks Administration of Argentina (in Spanish and English)
• World Heritage Site
• Iguazu Falls National Park