"Yaigojé" means Tiger’s Backwater according to the indigenous peoples that inhabit the lower basin of the Apaporis river, in the Colombian Amazon.
Since October 26th 1,056,023 ha from this region are now a new national protected area, the 55th Colombian Natinal Park, thanks to the funding of Fundación GAIA, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the initiative of ACIYA, the indigenous organization that groups the traditional authorities from the Macuna, Tanimuca, Letuama, Cabiyari, Barazano, Yujup-Macu and Yauna peoples, who hold in this land their sacred sites. This Park will now protect both the diversity and culture of its people and the biological manifestations of what they still hold sacred; forms of life which species numbers speak of their exuberance and yet their frailty: 1,683 species of vascular plants (33 Colombian endemics), 362 bird species (2 not found yet in any other protected area of the Colombian Amazon), 81 species of reptiles, 73 of amphibians, 201 of fish (3 new species records for Colombia), 443 species butterflies (3 new species), and 16 endangered mammal species.
The indigenous people have cared for this land and its life from the dawn of their spiritual memory, and their shamanistic practices still revere the meaningful places where the deities left the signs of their labor of creation: hills, backwaters, lakes, torrents, rivers, caves, springs and plains. Sacred, complex and diverse, the Yaigojé Apaporis National Park covers a unique mosaic of diverse rain forest types and physiographies from floodplains, as the Apaporis river in Caparú at 90m of elevation, to rocky formations as the Taraira and Jirijirimo mountain ranges at 250m elevation, and including hilly and strongly dissected landscapes between 100 and 150m elevation. Cared for by its indigenous peoples and now protected by the Colombian government, the 55th protected area of the National Park System, will benefit humanity as a whole, especially for the role of the zone in climate regulation and its importance for the development of actions for climate change adaptation.
