Context: The world’s largest wetland, the Pantanal in South America, is at the risk of collapse due to legal land-use decisions and proposals.

• Threats: Around 95% of the Pantanal is under private ownership, the majority of which is used for cattle grazing.

Pantanal Wetlands

• The Pantanal is a natural region encompassing the world’s largest tropical wetland area, and the world’s largest flooded grasslands.
• It is located mostly within the Brazilian and extends to some portions of Bolivia and Paraguay.
• It sprawls over an area estimated at between 140,000 and 195,000 square kilometer.
• Roughly 80% of the Pantanal floodplains are submerged during the rainy seasons, nurturing a biologically diverse collection of aquatic plants and helping to support a dense array of animal species.
• It has the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world.
• Jaguars, the largest feline in the Americas, hunt caiman in the Pantanal, which has one of the highest density of jaguars anywhere the world.
• The Pantanal is also home to the biggest parrot on the planet, the hyacinth macaw.
• The areas that are protected include parts that fall under an agreement called Ramsar that requires national governments to conserve and wisely use wetlands, and some that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves.
• The Pantanal is bounded by the Chiquitano dry forests to the west and northwest, by the Arid Chaco dry forests to the southwest and the Humid Chaco to the south.
• The Cerrado savannas lie to the north, east and southeast.

Significance of Pantanal

• The Pantanal is a refuge for iconic wildlife. This massive wetland has the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world, with approximately 10 million caimans.
• Jaguars, the largest feline in the Americas, hunt caiman in the Pantanal, which has one of the highest density of jaguars anywhere the world.

Risks faced

• Unlike the Amazon rainforest, vegetation in the Pantanal has evolved to coexist with fire — many plant species there require the heat from fires to germinate.
• Often caused by lightning strikes, those natural fires spring up at the end of the dry season, but the surrounding floodplains prevent them from spreading.
• What’s different now is the drought, contributing further to the unusually dry conditions and exacerbating the fire risk.