Yungas

The Yungas are a bioregion of forest running in a narrow band along the eastern slope of the Andes, from Peru and Bolivia south into the Argentine Northwest. The belt is a transition zone between the high Andean plateau and the eastern lowland forests, it belongs to the Neotropical realm, and its climate is rainy, humid and warm. Its forests range from moist lowland forest through evergreen montane forest to cloud forest, laid out as a mosaic that changes with latitude and elevation across very rugged terrain, and the region shows high biodiversity and many endemic species. The World Wide Fund for Nature divides it into three ecoregions, the Peruvian Yungas, the Bolivian Yungas and the Southern Andean Yungas, and the southern one may hold what remains of the evergreen forests left by the Quaternary glaciations. The name comes from Aymara and Quechua words for a warm area on the slopes of the Andes. In Peru, forest loss in the Yungas has sharply accelerated since the 2000s.