Quote: >Machu Picchu... cerca de 30 g?neros y 200 especies... >la extinci?n amenaza a...
etcetera. One interesting news clipping that I picked up in Lima last month was the following. A detailed study was done on the orchid flora in seven of the relatively level hectares surrounding the M Picchu site, which is of course one of the most visited and most studied places in the entire Andes. Unhappily I have lost the clipping itself, but the burden of it was the following: that the investigators identified around 270 species, of which no less than seven were new. That is, more than one in forty were new to science, in a place with nearly one million visitors per annum. Twenty miles away, the same river that flows past the Picchus breaks a mountain range to enter the lowland jungle, at the Pongo de Manique. This is supposed to be one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. Quilabamba, at one end of the Manique cañon, gets about 20 foreign visitors every year. Who knows what may lurk there? ______________________________ Oliver Sparrow +44 (0)1628 823187 www.chforum.org _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
