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rail – (Family: Rallidae) Small to medium-sized birds. Rails are secretive, solitary, and live in and around marshes. They eat animals and plants. There are more than 125 species world-wide. They are mainly threatened by agricultural encroachment and destruction and drainage of wetlands for urban sprawl.
recycle – To transform a waste material into a useable product.
red disa – (Disa uniflora) An orchid, as well as the symbol of the Cape Province of South Africa.
refugia – An area with relatively unaltered climate that is inhabitated by plants and animals during periods of large-scale climatic change (for example, glaciation) and that remains a center of relict forms from which the species disperse and speciation occurs once the climate reverts.
reptiles – These are air-breathing vertebrates that are cold-blooded, and their skin is often covered with scales. There are more than 6,000 species that occur worldwide, except for the Polar Regions. Reptiles are divided into several major groups: turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes), and rhynchocephalians (tuatara).
restricted range species – Plants or animals that are only found in a specific area or region. For example, the NGO BirdLife International defines bird species with restricted ranges as those species found in an area less than 50,000 km².
rhea – (Rhea americana) Also called the nandu, the rhea is a flightless bird from the forests of South America. At 2 meters tall, it is the largest bird in the Americas and a fast runner. Rheas congregate in flocks of about 20 to 30 birds. They eat plants, but will eat any small animals they catch. They are related to ostriches, emus and cassowaries.
rhododendrons – (Family: Ericaecae) about 850 species of poisonous trees and shrubs found in emperate and Southeast Asian tropical highlands. They typically have large, shiny, leathery evergreen leaves and clusters of large pink, white or purplish flowers.
riparian – Habitat along rivers or streams.
ruil forest – An endemic forest restricted to 100 kilometers of the temperate coastal range of Central Chile, in association with Nothofagus glauca, and Nothofagus obliqua. In 1981 the ruil forest was 825 hectares, but ten years later it had shrunk to 352 hectares, mainly due to the expansion of Monterrey pine plantations. The remnant ruil forest is composed of several small, regular fragments and few large, irregular ones, relatively isolated, surrounded by pine plantations. Despite being a unique and severely threatened ecosystem, only 45 hectares of the ruil forest are under protection in the Chilean System of Protected Areas.