After a journey of 24 days crossing the Andes to a region where white women had never before traveled, they arrived in Puerto Maldonado, a small village in the Amazon basin, situated between two large rivers, the Madre de Dios and the Tambopata, along which all communication took place.
Tambopata Province in the department of Madre de Dios in south-eastern Peru
Tourism, while an opportunity for conservation, is also proving to be a threat to the fragile ecosystems of the Tambopata-Candamo region along the Madre de Dios River basin, and along the Beni River in Bolivia (Rurrenabaque).
In 1991 and 1992 the researchers accelerated the formation of natural dead palm cavities by cutting off the crowns of 23 live Mauritia flexuosa palms in a natural monoculture of thousands of these palms in a 0.5 km2 swamp near the Tambopata Research Center (TRC), as blue-and-yellow macaws almost exclusively nest in dead Mauritia palms.
It is generally fairly common throughout its range and is easily seen in a wide range of protected areas, such as the Manú National Park and Tambopata-Candamo in Peru, Cristalino State Park (near Alta Floresta), Xingu National Park and Amazônia National Park in Brazil, and Madidi National Park in Bolivia.