Guiana Amazonian Park

The Guiana Amazonian Park, established in 2007 in French Guiana, is the largest national park in France and in the European Union, protecting a stretch of Amazonian rainforest that covers about 41 percent of French Guiana's territory, with a central protected zone of roughly 20,300 square kilometers and a wider area, including its buffer zone, of about 33,900 square kilometers. Reachable only by airplane or by pirogue along the Maroni and Oyapock rivers, and managed by the French Office for Biodiversity, the park protects extraordinary biodiversity, including some 90 amphibian species, 133 reptile species, 520 bird species and 182 mammal species, along with an estimated four to five thousand vascular plant species. Combined with Brazil's adjoining Tumucumaque National Park across the border, it forms part of the largest protected rainforest area in the world, and indigenous peoples including the Wayana, Wayampi, Teko and Aluku maintain territories within its boundaries.