The Chacoan peccary is so elusive that scientists believed it was extinct until its “discovery” in 1975. Today, only 3,000 remain in the […] forests and lagoons of the Gran Chaco region, which stretches across northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Bolivia, and comprises more than 50 different ecosystems.
Micaela Camino, who works with the Indigenous Wichí and Criollo communities to protect the animals and their land rights in Argentina, knows how difficult to find they can be. She has only seen one Chacoan peccary, or quimilero, in 13 years […], but has fallen in love with the critically endangered mammal […]. “I was told that the Chacoan peccary was extinct outside protected areas when I first started,” says Camino. “So when we found it, I thought it was great. We set up monitoring to find more in one of the most isolated parts of the dry Chaco. But then the loggers started to come.”
The Gran Chaco, South America’s second-largest forest after the Amazon, is one of the most deforested places on Earth.
Every month, more than 133 square miles is lost, cleared for vast soya farms and cattle ranches that export to markets in the US, China and Europe – including UK supermarkets, according to a joint Guardian investigation in 2019. However, the loss is largely ignored on the international stage, receiving little conservation money or celebrity attention in comparison with the Amazon.
The area is home to charismatic species such as the maned wolf, the giant armadillo and the jabiru, many of which are not found anywhere else on Earth.
At current rates of deforestation, the mosaic of life in the Gran Chaco could collapse entirely. The loss of the Chacoan peccary would be guaranteed this time. Unlike the Amazon, there are few academic studies on tipping points and the forest’s waning ability to support itself as the climate changes and land is cleared, but people who live here are seeing the changes. […]
In Paraguay, the success [of farming and ranching] […] has transformed the country into one of the most important beef producers in the world, largely at the expense of the forest, dubbed “the green hell” by early settlers from Canada.
“The Gran Chaco has been at a crossroads for a long time,” says Gastón Gordillo, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia. “The 2007 forest law in Argentina did manage to slow some deforestation, but it also created the paradox by establishing legitimate ways of destroying the forest.” […] However, a new motorway in Paraguay appears likely to open up more of the region to ranching. “The agribusiness sector in Argentina is very powerful,” says Gordillo […]
For the Chacoan peccary, research indicates there are only 30 years left to save the species, with current deforestation rates meaning all of its habitat outside protected areas will have gone by 2051.
Headline, images, captions, and text by: Patrick Greenfield. “Deforestation piles pressure on South America’s elusive Chacoan peccary.” The Guardian. 31 January 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]
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