Jaguar Corridors in the Face of Rapid Environmental Change: A dynamic monitoring and assessment system for prioritizing conservation investments

The Gran Chaco is a global deforestation hotspot which has fragmented ecosystems and reduced connectivity between natural habitats. The jaguar has disappeared in approximately 40% of its original distribution in the Argentine Chaco, and the remaining populations are fragmented and declining.

The Pantanal is the largest wetland in the world, sustaining the highest concentrations of wildlife in the Neotropical zone. Jaguars occupy approximately 42% of the biome. There is a potential division into northern and southern populations due to high deforestation rates in the southern region (Ferraz et al., 2013). Also, fires have negatively impacted jaguar conservation over the last 16 years, reducing populations, home range areas, and protected areas within home ranges.

The Gran Chaco and the Pantanal are interlinked. Unsustainable economic practices and development activities in the highlands of the Upper Paraguay River Basin, including Gran Chaco, Cerrado, and Chiquitano Dry Forest, are jeopardizing the Pantanal’s ecological health and its ability to provide critical ecosystem services. Compounding this threat is the region’s hydrological imbalance: evapotranspiration rates in the Pantanal exceed local rainfall, rendering the wetland reliant on water inflows from upstream highland areas to sustain its ecological functions.

Conserving biodiversity over time in a dynamic region such as the Pantanal-Chaco requires innovative solutions that improve decision-makers’ situational awareness and provides them with rigorous and actionable information to guide where to invest scarce resources to conserve this global biodiversity hotspot and carbon sink. The project will develop a dynamic monitoring and assessment system for the Pantanal-Chaco (PACHA) region to enable prioritization of conservation investments; strengthen ecological connectivity and restoration; and improve the effective management of biodiversity (including protected areas).