Researchers have described eight new species of plant from in and near Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Andes and Amazon rainforest. Described in the journal Novon by botanists with the Missouri Botanical Garden and the National Herbaium in Laz Paz, Bolivia, seven of the eight plants were found as apart of the Proyecto Madidi (Project Madidi), a ten year effort to describe the plant species of three inter-connecting protected areas in Bolivia—Madidi National Park, Pilón Lajas Biosphere Reserve and Communal Lands, and Apolobamba Integrated Management Natural Area.
“Before we started this project in 2000, this botanically rich area was essentially a white area on the map, almost unexplored,” says Dr. Peter Jørgensen, associate curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden, in a press release. “There has been very little general collecting in this area. Over the course of a decade we have documented more than 7,000 species, which is about a third of what you can find in North America.”
Of these 7,000 species, researchers with the project have found 132 that were unknown to science, only 32 of which have so far been formally described.
The protected areas spread over 100,000 square kilometers and cover habitats from high glacial peaks to the Amazon rainforest. Although protected, portions of these areas are threatened by new roads, expanding cattle ranching and farming.
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