Güirá Oga, the Birds’ House

No sooner do visitors arrive in Güirá Oga than they are explained –through brochures or a guide- that this place is unlike any other they might have known. This is a wildlife rescue, rehabilitation and breeding center.

The idea is to rescue, recover and reintroduce specimens that get to this place whether because they have been victims of an accident, confiscated or delivered by regretful owners. This is how the provincial fauna got to this place in Puerto Iguazú.

A tour around the facilities will give evidence of the love for the animals, as well as of the maturity and the criterion this topic is dealt with.

During our visit, we learned that the animals are not always reinserted in their ecosystem, even though this is the main purpose of this undertaking. Animals often lose part of their faculties and this would turn them into an easy prey if freed in the rainforest.

Güirá Oga Center is located in a 19-hectare venue referred to as “protected landscape” under the name “Andrés Giai”, in honor of the well-known naturalist.

This site features interesting vegetable foliage over a hundred years old. Trees can reach 30 meters of height. About 40 different species have been identified and about 50 kinds of butterflies fly constantly around this rainforest environment.

The tour starts at a projection room, where visitors are visually immersed in the territory of Misiones. That is the moment when they have a hint of the countless species seen during the tour.

On board a specially prepared vehicle, adventure begins. Visitors can see the different animals sheltered at the center. Some of them are coatis, monkeys, toucans, dusky-legged guans, parrots and hyacinth macaws, solitary tinamous, hawks, eagles and owls, to name a few.

Buy beyond the animals observed, the most outstanding feature is the skill the guides use with each participant. Every animal has a name, a history and many times an anecdote of how they arrived in this center.

Each of those details contains the affection felt for every species dwelling in the park, whether for good, because it is impossible to reinsert them in the rainforest, or temporarily, until the animal gets better and may be free again.

This is a clear example of a job well done with private funds as, like in the case of most good Argentinian projects, there is no kind of financial assistance from the national or provincial government in charge. Maybe that is why it has endured the test of time.

If you have not visited Güirá Oga, you have not visited Puerto Iguazú.