Coiba Island National Park - Panama

This park consists a group of islands with Coiba being the largest - Ranchería (Coibita), Jicarón, Jicarita, Afuerita, Canal de Afuera, Uvas, Contreras and Brincanco islands.

Coiba Island National Marine Park has been compared to Galapagos for its natural beauty and landscape. Coiba Island National Marine Park is rich in biodiversity. More than three quarters of the island is covered by virgin rain forests, and the majority of the park consists of ocean waters filled with rare species of fish, fowl and whales. Coiba Island Marine Park is best known for it's scarlet macaws, its bottle-nosed dolphins and the brown and white Coiba spinetail bird, the only bird of its kind in the world. Only a small percentage of Coiba Island's plant life has actually been identified!

Protected from the cold winds and effects of El Niño, Coiba’s Pacific tropical moist forest maintains exceptionally high levels of endemism of mammals, birds and plants due to the ongoing evolution of new species. It is also the last refuge for a number of threatened animals such as the crested eagle. The property is an outstanding natural laboratory for scientific research and provides a key ecological link to the Tropical Eastern Pacific for the transit and survival of pelagic fish and marine mammals.

1919 Coiba Island started to be used by the Panamanian Government as a penal colony - this is part of the reason it has been preserved so well. Since 1993 and with the help of the Spanish Co-operation Agency, AECI, the park has had a biological station.

Coiba Island Marine Park was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 2005.