• Summary
• Text
• Details
• Map
• Resources

Site description (2003 baseline):

Soberanía National Park occupies most of the former U.S.-administered Canal Zone east and north of the central section of the Panama Canal and southern Lake Gatún. It is divided into northern and southern sections by the middle Chagres River. The terrain is mostly broken, with some flatter land in the Frijoles River basin in the northern section. The high point (332 m) is in the headwaters of the Frijoles. The Summit Botanical Garden and Zoo is located within the southern end of the park. Adjacent land along the northern and eastern boundary is devoted to cattle and subsistence agriculture, and the town of Chilibre is located near the southeastern corner. Madden Road crosses the southern sector, and the gravel Pipeline Road runs most of the length of the northern sector.

The area from the continental divide south is an important bottleneck site for migratory raptors. In 2004 a total of 281,212 Turkey Vultures, 570,829 Broad-winged Hawks, and 138,805 Swainson's Hawks were counted on autumn migration. A significant proportion of these probably use the park as an overnight roost. The globally near-threatened Great Curassow occurs but is rare, and many nationally threatened species including Crested Guan also are found. Endemic species include Black-crowned Antpitta, Yellow-green Tyrannulet, and Sulphur-rumped Tanager of the Central American Caribbean Slope and/or Darien Lowlands EBAs. In 1999 the Peregrine Fund introduced several captive-bred Harpy Eagles (formerly found in the area but now locally extinct) to the park as part of a pilot program.

Non-bird biodiversity: Mammals include Central American Woolly Opossum, Silky Anteater, Northern Naked-tailed Armadillo, Geoffroy’s Tamarin, Western Night Monkey, Panamanian Spiny Pocket-Mouse, Capybara, Bush Dog, Olingo, Neotropical River Otter, Ocelot, Margay, Jaguarundi, Puma, Jaguar, Baird’s Tapir, and West Indian Manatee. Reptiles and amphibians include the frogs Colosthetus flotator and C. inguinalis, the snakes Dipsas variegata, D. viguieri, and Trimetopon barbouri, and American Crocodile

The northern part of the park contains evergreen lowland forest, grading into semideciduous lowland forest in the south. Most of the forest is less than 100 years old, but some old growth of probably more than 500 years is found in the north.

Although 1,600 ha (7%) of the park has previously been deforested, mostly along the northern and eastern boundary, illegal clearing has now been largely controlled. Construction of the first part of the new Transisthmian Highway recently cut off a small area of forest in the southern sector. Due to its proximity to urban areas, poaching, including market hunting, is a severe problem in the park. Less than 30 minutes from downtown Panama City, the park has great potential for ecotourism, and two nature-oriented hotels have recently opened. Pipeline Road is the best known birding site in Panama, and there are several other maintained trails, although the park as yet has no visitor center. Part of the historic Spanish colonial Camino de Cruces Trail runs through the southern part of the park.

The area is the site of extensive research by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, particularly along Pipeline Road. Studies on population dynamics of birds have been nearly continuous since the 1960s. The Fundacion Avifauna Eugene Eisenmann has established the Panama Rainforest Discovery Center at the park boundary to promote conservation of the area.

Soberanía National Park was created in 1980 to protect the largest forested areas of the Canal Zone that reverted to Panama after ratification of the Carter-Torrijos Treaty. There are 10 park guards. In the northwest Soberanía is contiguous with the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, in the southeast with Camino de Cruces National Park, and along its western and southern boundary with forests zoned as Canal Operating Area.

---

Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2025) Important Bird Area factsheet: Soberanía National Park (Panama). Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/soberanía-national-park-iba-panama on 15/01/2025.