Réserve naturelle intégrale de Punta Lara, Nature reserve in Berazategui Partido, Argentina.

Reserva Natural Integral Punta Lara protects a strip of marginal forest along the Río de la Plata, northwest of the Punta Lara locality, in northern Ensenada and southeastern Berazategui. It began with 29 hectares around the Las Cañas stream and was enlarged to 6,000 hectares at the start of the 21st century. From the wet brown sand and shallow pools in front of it, the leafless trees and brownish-green shrubs form a continuous treeline.

The name "Lara" recalls Captain Bernardo de Lara, who took possession of the headland in 1700, then called "punta Ballena" after a whale stranding there. The land later passed to the Ximenez family and in 1850 to Simón Pereyra, whose estancia "San Juan" was registered in 1878 to his son Leonardo Pereyra Iraola. In 1913 Martín Doello Jurado first proposed protecting the area; Ángel Lulio Cabrera's 1939 study of the forest along Las Cañas stream led to the reserve's creation on 19 February 1943.

The name "Lara" honours Captain Bernardo de Lara, who took possession of the point in 1700; it had previously been called "punta Ballena" after whales stranded there. Excavations in the area have yielded angular pipes, scrapers, arrowheads and funerary urns, some with ochre-red painting on a white ground, linked to Guaraní and Querandí communities of the Río de la Plata shore.

Most of the reserve floods during sudestadas, when water covers the surface for only a few hours. The site lies on the Río de la Plata coast northwest of Punta Lara, in northern Ensenada and southeastern Berazategui. Annual rainfall is about 1,040 mm, mostly in the warm months, and light frosts occur in winter away from the river.

The reserve's 30-hectare forest core was declared a "Reserva Forestal" by decree 18529 on 26 August 1949, the same year the Pereyra Iraola estate was expropriated under Juan Domingo Perón. In 1958 decree 5421 renamed it "Reserva Natural Integral de Selva Marginal de Punta Lara".