Tropicario Bogotá Botanic Garden / DARP

Bogotá is the capital of Colombia, it is located in the centre of the country at 2,600 meters above sea level. The territory that the city occupies is known as the “The Bogotá Savanna”, a plateau that is part of the eastern mountain range of the Andes. The city is limited in the eastern area by a mountainous system known as the eastern hills and in the west by the Bogotá River. About 20,000 years ago this territory was a large lake that joined the hills and the river. Today there are only some traces of this past lake, the city drained the vast majority of wetlands for its urban development, going from 50,000 hectares at the beginning of the 20th century, to only 727, leaving only 1.45% of the original area. This deterioration is largely due to widespread ignorance of the importance of wetlands in ecosystems.