Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, in Bolivia's Santa Cruz Department on the border with Brazil, protects about 15,523 square kilometers where Amazon rainforest meets cerrado dry forest and savanna, including the Huanchaca Plateau, one of the largest protected tracts of undisturbed cerrado in the world at some 42,000 hectares. Established in 1979 as Parque Nacional Huanchaca, it was renamed in 1988 to honor the biologist Noel Kempff Mercado, who was killed in the park after discovering a clandestine cocaine laboratory on the plateau. UNESCO inscribed the park as a World Heritage Site in 2000 for its wide range of habitat types and viable populations of globally threatened large vertebrates, with roughly 4,000 recorded vascular plant species, 139 mammal species and 620 bird species.
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